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HISTOEICAL SUEVEY 



OF 



PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 



BY 

S. S. LAURIE, A.M., LL.D. 

PROFESSOR OF THE INSTITUTES AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF EDINBURGH; AUTHOR OF 'INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION,' 'LANGUAGE 
AND LINGUISTIC METHOD IN THE SCHOOL,' 'LIFE AND EDUCA- 
TIONAL WRITINGS OF COMENIUS,' ETC. 



SECOND EDITION, REVISED 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
LONDON AND BOMBAY 

1900 



15B78 

Library of Coni^ress 

Two Copies Received 
JUL 7 1900 

Cop^fignt entry 

FIRST COPY. 

2nd Copy Delivered to 

ORDER DIVISION 

JUL 9 1900 



L/l ^i 
. L a^ 

Copy 2j 



Copyright, 1900, by 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

All rights reserved. 



2Entbcrsits ^vess: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



This book is a historical survey, not a history. At the same 
time I believe that nothing essential to the understanding of 
pre-Christian education has been omitted. 

In traversing so wide a field, I cannot expect to have 
escaped errors : I hope these are of a minor kind and that 
they will be pointed out. Certain opinions may be considered 
erroneous by some of the experts in the various departments 
of historical inquiry in which I have involved myself : but 
until experts are themselves at one, I may be allowed to 
form my own judgment. 

The greatest difficulty that presented itself was the giving 
expression, within the limits of a few pages, to the religious 
and ethical attitude of the various nations of antiquity to 
life and its duties. Brief statements on so all-important a 
matter cannot fail to be inadequate, and this all the more 
because the gradual historical development of religious beliefs 
has, for our purposes, to be ignored. 

My aim has been to seize the leading religious and social 
characteristics of pre-Christian societies as these were actually 
found operative in the life of the people of each nation taken 
as a whole. For example, the purified and abstract religious 



VI PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 

conceptions of the Greek dramatists and philosophers are in 
the history of thought of surpassing value, but they had 
little to do with the religious and moral forces which gov- 
erned the actual life of the Hellenic races. The general cur- 
rent of religious belief and emotion on which Greece was 
carried forward to the manifestation of a supreme activity 
in arts and arms is what chiefly concerns the educational 
historian. For it was on this broad current alone that the 
life, and consequently the education, of the people was borne 
along. 

So with the Hindus. The doctrines of Brahmanical 
philosophical sects are part of the history of thought, but it 
is only the governing idea of Brahmanism and the moral sen- 
timents and convictions flowing from this, that are reflected 
in the life, character, and education of the race. I hope that 
the reader will bear these things in mind and not expect 
from me more than I profess to give. 

Further, in estimating the civilisation of a people, I have 
had to confine myself to that point of time at which they 
were approaching the highest expression of the national 
idea. 

As regards Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, I have formed 
my own judgment on the materials at present available. 
Every reader will understand that the history of these coun- 
tries is now in the process of reconstruction. Professor 
Flinders Petrie's History, now being published, when fol- 
lowed by a history and estimate of Egyptian civilisation, 
will doubtless place Egyptology on a firmer basis. 

S. S. LAURIE. 



NOTE. 

The various chapters are based on the authorities enumer- 
ated, with references to many others not named (inekiding En- 
cyclopaedias) . In the final revision before printing, I kept 
before me, and took occasional assistance from, Schmidt's 
Geschichte der Pddagogik, 1870, and Schraid's G.esehichte der 
Erziehung^ &c., 1885, chiefly in the chapters on Greek educa- 
tion. 

University of Edinburgh, Aipril, 1895. 



NOTE TO SECOND EDITION 

In this second edition I have made corrections — these, how- 
ever, verbal except in the chapter on the Jews. 



S. S. L. 



Edinburgh, 1900. 



CONTENTS 



IxTRODUCTiON. — The place of the History of Education in Uni- 
versal History 1-8 

THE HAMITIC RACES 

Egypt. — Political Constitution. Religion and Ethics. Literature 
and Art. Social Condition. Women. Education in Egypt. 
Instruction of the People. Method and Discipline ... 1 1-48 

THE SEMITIC RACES 

Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews 

(1) The Arabs. (2) The Babylonians. Education. The 
masses of the people. Education of the upper classes. (3) 
The Assyrians. (4) The Hebrews or Jews. MosaismrThe 
Priesthood, Prophets, and Scribes, as educational forces. Edu- 
cation of the Young among the Jews generally. Epochs of 
Jewish Education. The First Period. The Second Period. 
The Third Period (Period of the Scribe and the Synagogue). 
Higher Education. Popular Education. Fourth Period (Period 
of the Rabbin and .the Elementary School). The Talmud and 
Education 51-100 

THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 

China. — Chapter I. National Characteristics. Language. 
General Character of the Chinese. II. Religion and Phil- 
osophy OF Life. Sacred Books. Philosophical attitude of 
the Chinese mind. Religion. III. The Dominant Ideas of 



X PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

PAOK 

Chinese Life. IV. The Educational System. 1. Its 
General Character and Aim. 2. The External Organisation of 
the Examination System. 3. The Examinations. 4. Rewards 
of Success in the Examinations. 5. Subjects of Examination. 
6. Schools, Teachers, Course of Study and Method : (o) Teach- 
ers and Schools. (V) The Course of Study, (c) Method of 
Instruction. Earlier Stages, (rf) Higher Stages, (e) Con- 
clusion 103-152 

THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 

Hindus, Medo-Persians, Hellenes, Italians (Romans') 

(A) India and the Hindus. — Religion and Ethics. Educa- 
tion among the Hindus. Aim. Organisation and Materials of 
Education. Women. Teachers. Method and Discipline 155-177 

(B) The Medo-Persians. — General Characteristics. Social 
and Civil Relations. Persian Character. Religion and Ethics. 
Education of the Ancient Persians 178-195 

(C) The Hellenic Race. — Chapter I, General Charac- 
teristics. Religion. Art. Manhood. II. The Greek 
Ideal of Manhood and the Consequent Character- 
istics OF Hellenic Education generally. IH. Edu- 
cation AMONG THE DoRiAN Greeks. Cretan Education. 
Simrtan Education. 1. Infancy. 2. Education of the Boys. 

3. Education of the Young Men. 4. Education of the Women. 
IV. Athenian and Ionic- Attic Education. 1. Infancy. 
2. Childhood and Boyhood. 3. State Supervision and Schools. 

4. Education of the School : (o) Primary Instruction and 
Methods. Literary Education. Reading, Arithmetic, Writing, 
Drawing, Geometry, Geography. (h) Secondary Education. 
(c) Music in the narrower sense of the ivord. (d) Gymnastic. 
(e) Moral Education. {/) Advanced Education, (g) School 
and Home Discipline. (A) Education of the Women, (i) Method. 



PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION xi 

PAGE 

The Schoolmaster. Schoolhouses. Holidays. (5) Contrast be- 
tween Athenian and Spartan Education. V. The Higher 
Education in the Fifth Century b.c. and thereafter. 
Note on Aristotle 1&6-300 

(D) The Romans. — Chapter I. The Roman People and 
THEIR General Characteristics. Religion. Social Life. 
Civil Relations. Personal Character of the Romans. II. His- 
torical Development of Roman Education. First 
National Period, to 303 B.C. Second National Period, 303 b.c. 
to 148 B.C. Third National Period, 148 b.c. onward. III. 
Curriculum of Study. Schools, Methods, and Mas- 
ters. Primary Instruction. Secondary Instruction. The 
Higher Instruction. Oratory. Discipline, Teachers, School- 
houses. IV. Details of Instruction and Method in 
the Grammatical and Rhetorical Schools: The School 
of the Grammaticus. The School of the Rhetorician. V. The 
School of Quintilian. Quintilian and his Educational 
Aim. First Book of the Institutions. Primary Instruction. Sec- 
ondary Instruction. Second Book. The Higher Instruction, 
etc. VI. Education in Imperial Times. The Classical 
Decadence. Tacitus. Petronius Arbiter. Educational Activity 
under the Emperors. Plutarch. Musonius. Rise of Chris- 
tianity. Conclusion 301-411 



HISTORICAL SURVEY 



OF 



PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 



INTEODUCTION 

THE PLACE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATIOISr IN UNIVERSAL 
HISTORY 

The history of education is involved in the general history 
of the world. No adequate survey of it is possible which 
does not presume a considerable acquaintance with the his- 
tory of the leading races which have occupied and subdued 
the earth and formed themselves into civilised societies. 

At what successive periods did these races enter on a pro- 
gressive civilisation ; what were i;he leading intellectual and 
moral characteristics of each ; under what circumstances of 
climate, soil, and contention with other nascent or dying 
nations were these native characteristics developed and 
moulded ; and what was the issue of all to the wealth, the 
life, the thought, the art of humanity ? — these are questions 
which concern us intimately as students of the history of 
education. For the history of the education of a people is 
not the history of its schools, but the history of its civilisa- 
tion ; and its civilisation finds its record mainly in its intel- 
lectual, moral, and a?sthetic products, and only in a subordinate 
way in its material successes, and its achievements in war. 

To treat of the education of the human race in this its 
broadest conception would be to attempt a philosophy of 



2 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

history. We have accordingly to narrow our view, and this 
we can do only by jfirst narrowing the scope of the word 
education. The education of the ancient Egyptians, for 
example, is not precisely synonymous with the history of 
the civilisation of that race as a factor in the universal his- 
tory of man. At the same time, it certainly embraces an 
estimate of the civiUsing forces at work among that remark- 
able people, and involves our forming a pretty clear concep- 
tion of their social organisation and of the ideal of life and 
character to which they unconsciously attained, or after 
which they consciously strove. For by education, even in 
the narrow sense in which the word must be employed here, 
I understand the means which a nation, with more or less 
consciousness, takes for bringing up its citizens to maintain 
the tradition of national character, and for promoting the 
welfare of the whole as an organised ethical community. It 
is essential, therefore, that we should understand the objects 
wliich the nation, as such, desired to secure ; in brief, its 
own more or less conscious ideal of national and civic hfe, 
of personal character, and of ideal political justice. If we 
can ascertam this by the study of its highest products in 
men, deeds, thought and arts, we have made a great step 
towards interpreting the course of training to which it would 
naturally endeavour to subject its youth by means of its 
laws and institutions. 

In a historical survey we can afford to ignore the vast 
variety of tribes which are still in a savage state, and which, 
either by innate incapacity for development, or by the force 
of irresistible external circumstances, have risen little above 
the beasts that perish. The human possibilities of such 
tribes may be, in germ, as high as those of many more fav- 
oured races ; but this is doubtful. They labour to acquire 
skill in getting food by the exercise either of bodily vigour 
or successful cunning, and they cherish the virtue of bravery 
in warding off the attacks of others like themselves. As 
they have, however, no political or ethical ideal, they can 



INTRODUCTION 3 

have no education in the sense in which we use the term in 
this book. They can teach us nothing. For, training to 
expertness in the use of the weapons of the chase or of 
war is not education, except in a narrow technical sense. 
It is only when the ideas of bodily vigour, of bravery, of 
strength, bodily beauty, or personal morality, become desired 
for themselves, or as the necessary conditions of pohtical 
life and national conservation, that education begins. The 
training which the national idea gives has then an ideal aim 
more or less conscious. An education which contemplates 
an ideal of life for each man, as distinct from the state 
organism as a whole, is, necessarily, of later growth. 

It is only, then, with those nations which, by virtue of 
their ordered civilisation, had an idea of individual or of 
national life, and which, by virtue of their having this idea, 
possessed a civilisation, that we have to do. The races 
which chiefly interest us are the Indo-European or Aryan, 
to which we ourselves belong, and it might be sufficient to 
trace the history of education among the peoples who bear 
the Aryan character as that has developed itself west of the 
Caucasus. But we should feel the survey of educational 
history to be imperfect if we did so. It is desirable, there- 
fore, to comprehend other races, such as the Hamitic, the 
Semitic, and Uro-Altaic ; and not wholly to omit the Aryan 
element south-east of the Cq-ucasus. We are, of course, com- 
pelled to confine ourselves, in dealing with the education of 
almost all these races, to the highest and most generalised 
expression of their national life ; and this, frequently, for 
want of materials to do anything else. 

As the idei^l of life grows in a nation, its idea of educa- 
tion grows and it begins to ask more and more in a self- 
conscious way, How can we attain this ideal in the persons 
of our children ? Thus arise systems of education in civ- 
ilised countries. Such systems or customs as may have 
existed prior to the asking of this question are not con- 
sciously constructed with a view to a specific result. Nations 
feel their way, by slow degrees, to the highest expression of 



4 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

their corporate life and to the best machinery for sustaining 
and promoting it, taught by the results of experience and 
their ever-growing thought on the nature and destiny of man 
and the conditions of national permanence. Thus it is that 
the education of a nation has always been determined mainly 
by its moral and spiritual leaders. These, as the historians 
of its experience and the conservators of its thought, right- 
fully govern. They have in all ages, till recent times, been 
more or less identified with a church or priesthood in one 
form or other ; and if there be no distinctive organised 
priesthood as among the Chinese, Greeks, and Eomans, then 
by that which takes its place — a political aristocracy which 
always embodies in its scheme of civil life, moral and 
religious, if not also theological, conceptions. In such cases 
the State is the church. 

The educational aim, we shall find, is always practical in 
the large sense of that word ; for, even in its highest aspects, 
it has always to do with life in some form or other, and 
indeed presumes a certain philosophy of life. Even philos- 
ophy, religion and poetry have a practical aim — the nobler 
life of a man as an individual and as a citizen ; and, when 
they forget this aim, they degenerate into verbal frivolities 
or empty forms. This higher form of the practical aim is 
' liberal ' education. 

But not only in this larger sense is the educational aim 
always practical, but till the time of the Athenians it was 
always practical in the narrower sense of the word. Indeed, 
in every form of national education, the 'practical' in the 
restricted sense of the term, in other words, the professional 
and technical, always occupied (and must always occupy) 
the greater part of the field, thwarting or promoting the 
larger general aim. It is this narrower aim, which statesmen 
and politicians generally contemplate in their public acts ; 
for all civilised societies demand services of a specific kind, 
which can fitly be discharged only by those who are trained 
to discharge them. The division of occupations, aU of which 



INTRODUCTION 5 

are in their degree serviceable to the community, makes 
specific training necessary, if service is to be efficiently ren- 
dered. Thus we have classes of the population trained and 
devoted to the various industrial arts ; to the fine arts ; to the 
service of man's body — the medical art; to the service of 
mutual rights — the legal art ; to the service of man's spirit — 
the priestly art, of which last the teaching art, in the highest 
conception of it, is a branch ; to the military art ; and so forth. 

The education of a man as a member of a nation and for 
manhood simply, is what we mean by ' liberal ' education, 
and this, I have said, is to be identified with the ' practical ' 
in its highest sense, which may be summed up in the word 
' ethical ' : the training for specific services, again, is technical, 
whether we dignify some of these services by calling them 
professions or not. The stress of competition among indi- 
viduals and nations compels us, unhappily, more and more 
to give a specific character to our training, and to ignore the 
larger national and human aims. It is clear, however, that 
in so far as we lose sight of the latter in the interest of the 
former we err : because it is the broad human and national 
element in education that gives character and power and 
makes itself felt in every department of work. If we fail in 
giving this, all specific activities of mind will be weakened 
by the weakening of their foundation in the man as a man. 
In the systematisation of education accordingly, the real 
problem amounts in these days to this : How shall we rear 
specific aptitudes on the basis of a common instruction and 
discipline which shall contemplate the man and the citizen, 
and only in the second place the worker ? ' This (ideal per- 
fection of citizenship) is,' says Plato, ^ 'the only education 
which in our view deserves the name ; that other sort of 
training which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily 
strength or mere cleverness, apart from intelligence and jus- 
tice, is mean and illiberal and not worthy to be called educa- 
tion at all.' 

1 Laws, i. 465, as rendered by Jowett. 



6 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

The modern educational problem may, perhaps, be put 
thus: — How shall we conserve the national type, tradition, 
and ideal, and, while training for specific arts, educate all to 
such manhood as their racial possibilities and historical 
tradition admit of? 

In the historical evolution of the educational idea we may 
note at least three stages. First of all, we have the unpre- 
meditated education of national character and institutions, 
and of instinctive ideals of personal and community life in 
contact with definite external conditions, and moulding or 
being moulded by these. Secondly, we find that the educa- 
tion of the citizen becomes a matter of public concern, and 
means, often inadequate, are taken by individuals or societies 
within the State for handing down the national tradition by 
the agency of the family and the school, and by public 
institutions and ceremonials ; but there is no systematised 
purpose. Thirdly: Education passes out of the hands of 
irregular agencies, and, from being a merely public and vol- 
untary, becomes a political or State interest. We then have 
a more or less conscious ideal of national life, determin- 
ing the organisation of educational agencies and reducing 
these to an elaborate system designed to meet the wants 
of the citizen at every age from infancy to manhood. 

Education, in the third stage of development, is to a large 
extent taken out of the hands of the family. But at all 
stages of educational history (and notwithstanding the action 
of the State) the family is the chief agency in the education 
of the young, and as such, it ought never to be superseded. 
The State is made up of families rather than of individuals : 
the family is the true moral unit. We are what our fathers 
have made us, and future generations are what we are even 
now making our children. There is a continuity in the life 
of a nation, and the individual, here and now, is a mere tran- 
sition point from the past to the future. It is in truth the 
family tradition, along with civil and religious institutions, 
which chiefly educates. Whatever tradition there may be of 



INTRODUCTION 7 

opinion and conduct, whatever may be the laws and institu- 
tions by which the State protects itself as an organised body, 
it must rely on the family to hand down and perpetuate 
these and to give them the support of the affections and sen- 
timents of our nature. And where, owing to the social 
necessities of a complex civilisation, it is found necessary to 
set apart a class to help in the work which it is the primary 
duty of parents to discharge, that class should regard itself 
as, in every sense, in loco parentis : that is to say, the aims, 
instruments, and methods of the school should always be 
those of a humane and enlightened parent. The moral and 
religious influence of the school ought to be, for example, as 
far as possible, a mere continuation and extension of the 
family conception of education, and not an alien substitute 
for it. If this be understood and accepted, the deductions 
from it will be found to be numerous and significant. 

As we survey the annals of education we see that it is the 
national tradition through the family that constitutes the 
earliest form. The Komans had thus moulded themselves 
and their State and were already marked for empire, before 
they had any schools. So the Persians were a brilliant and 
imperial nation, though destitute of schools in any modern 
sense of the word. Hellenic education, again, for probably 
two centuries before Socrates, was an illustration of the 
second period of national education in which State tradition 
and institutions combined with schools (existing but as yet 
undeveloped) to form the Greek mind and body. In post- 
Socratic times the Greek became self-conscious in his educa- 
tional aims — he had a type of man whom he aimed at pro- 
ducing. The Eomans towards the end of the Eepublic 
followed, with some differences, the leading of Greece ; but 
it cannot be said that education was ever systematised by 
either people. 

The only nations in pre-Christian times, who had attained 
to the third stage of national education before the Christian 
era, were the Chinese and the Doric Greeks as represented 
by the Spartans. The former had, and have, a definite ideal 



8 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

of human excellence, such as it is ; hut always with a view 
to the service of a bureaucratic State. So with the Spartans, 
where the whole organisation (but the Spartans were, after 
all, a mere tribe) was educational, and where every freeborn 
citizen was deliberately formed to a certain ideal — also (as 
in China) in the interests of civic continuity. 

The Hellenic races, however, much as we owe them, had 
no conception of education as a human need and a human 
right ; they thought only of the free, pure Greeks who formed 
an aristocracy among a body of servile inferiors. This char- 
acteristic of the Greeks was specially emphasised in Sparta. 
The Eomans, also, thought chiefly of the upper half of soci- 
ety. In Egypt, Judffia, Persia, and China, on the other hand, 
nothing stood, theoixtically at least, between the lowest mem- 
ber of the community and the best the State could offer in 
the way of education, except poverty. It was the Stoics in 
the earlier imperial times who first rose to the conception of 
humanity and of human, as distinct from local and national 
rights ; and Christianity about the same time proclaimed 
these. The Stoic and Christian were the first humanitarians, 
and consequently the first to believe in the inherent right of 
each citizen to claim education for himself. 

In taking a survey of educational history we have to bear 
in mind the distinctions I have made in these introductory 
remarks (and which might with advantage be even further 
elaborated) and carry them always with us. If we do not, 
we shall certainly fail to interpret facts aright and to learn 
the lessons which the past has to teach. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 



THE H AMI TIC RACES 

Under the designation Hamites are generally included 
Egyptians, Ethiopians to the south of Egypt, Libyans to 
the west and north-west, the inhabitants of south-eastern 
Arabia, and the Hittites (extending from the Taurus range 
to Canaan). In the Egyptians this race of mankind found 
the highest expression of its capacity for civihsed life, as did 
the Hebrews among the Semites, the Chinese among the 
Uro-Altaic (Turanian) and the Greeks among the Aryans. 
And quite apart from their superiority to other nations of 
their own blood, we find the Egyptians to be by far the 
most interesting of ancient peoples, in respect, at least, of 
the antiquity and detailed organisation of their complex 
civilisation. 

EGYPT 

It is now generally believed that tlie original immigrants 
who formed the Egyptian nation did not come from 
Ethiopia or Libya, but from the interior of Asia,^ 

Egypt proper is a country made, and it may be almost 
said annually re-made, by a single river — the Nile, which, 
rising in the equatorial regions, falls into the Mediterranean. 
The water and mud deposited by the river in its annual 

1 Professor Petrie, in vol. i. of his History, says that the Egyptians came 
from the land of Pun or Punt, which seems to have been on both sides of the 
southern part of the Red Sea, having reached this region from the vicinity of 
the Persian Gulf, moving south and west. He connects them with the 
Phcenicians, who would then have to be classed under the Hamitic, and not 
the Semitic, race. The history of Egypt is usually given under thirty dynas- 
ties, beginning, according to Marietta, with Mena, 4400 B.C., and ending with 
Alexander the Great, B.C. 332. These do not include that of the foreign (and 
(ioubtless Semitic) Hyksos, which lasted about 500 years prior to 2226 b.q. 



12 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

inundations have made Egypt probably the most fertile 
tract of country in the world. When we consider that it 
is enclosed on all sides by desert or mountains or seas, and 
thus shut off from contact with other countries, we can 
understand that it should early become the home of a 
settled people who would develop their life and civilisation 
from within. It is this exclusion from external influences 
that gives to Egypt, a unique position in the history of civili- 
sation.i The fertility of the soil, and we may add the easy 
conditions of life caused by an almost uniform climate, en- 
abled the Nile basm to support a large population. The 
tradition is that there were 20,000 cities, but doubtless 
among cities were included what we should call villages. 

The conquering race which occupied Egypt (already 
inhabited by a primitive barbarian population) had three 
leading characteristics — a natural capacity for equity and 
government, a shrewd practical intelligence, and a deep 
religious sense in which the feehng of awe predominated. 
Their religious sentiment revolved round two points, (1) A 
feeling of wonder as they contemplated the forces of nature 
and the regular and beneficent recurrence of natural events. 
This was forced on the Egyptians, above all other races, by 
the peculiarities of their physical conditions. (2) The fact 
and mystery of death which always lay close to the Egyptian 
mind. The Pyramids alone, were there no other records, 
would testify to all time the profound sense of the serious- 
ness of life and the majesty of death which characterised the 
ancient Egyptians. 

Political constitution. — At a very early period we find 
the country divided into forty-two nomes or districts, each 
with its own captain or governor. It would seem that the 
chieftainship was originally hereditary, and that Egypt was 
a feudal monarchy ; but as the monarchy gained strength 
these heads of nomes were either appointed by the sovereign 

1 The same remark applies to China. I do not mean to say tliat Egypt 
and China l^ad no external relations, but merely that they were as nothing 
compared with those of other races. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 13 

or had to be confirmed in their authority by him. Egypt 
was a monarchy from very early times (probably 5000 years 
B.C.), but the relation of the monarch to the nomes and their 
chiefs fluctuated, and the heads of principalities frequently 
quarrelled with each other and with the central government. 
The monarchy, when finally supreme, was despotic in its 
character, and supported by a strong and wealthy priesthood. 
Eanke points out that a despotic monarchy was a necessity 
of the situation, not only because of the need of a central 
authority for civil and military purposes, but also because of 
the annual inundations which had to be regulated through- 
out the length and breadth of Egypt and made local auton- 
omy impossible. One river made Egypt, and there was 
consequent need for a central administration to watch and 
regulate the waters and settle questions of ever-shifting 
boundaries as the waters retired. The monarch was centre 
of all government, and, as symbol of the unity of the life of 
the nation in a material as well as moral sense, he was 
likened to god, and called the son of god ; and not only 
ccdled the son, but believed to be the son of the god (Ra), 
and treated as such during his lifetime. He was, in a real 
and practical sense, regarded as god on earth and intermediary 
with the gods in heaven. 

Tlie administrators of justice, after a certain date, may 
have been men of legal training ; but speaking of Egypt 
generally, we find that the decision of civil suits and the 
trial of criminal cases was a part of the general executive 
functions of the chiefs of nomes and the governors of towns 
or villages. ' For a certain number of days in the month 
they sat at the gate of the town or of the building which 
served as their residence, and all those possessed of any title, 
position, or property, the superior priesthood of the temples, 
scribes who had advanced or grown old in office, those in 
command of the militia or police, the heads of divisions 
or corporations, might, if they thought fit, take their position 
beside them and help to decide ordinary lawsuits.'^ The 

1 Maspero's Dawn of Civilisation in the East, p. 336. 



14 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

poor man, we may presume, had little chance of obtaming 
a just decision before a tribunal so constituted, if his claim 
conflicted with that of his social superiors. The monarch 
was fountain of law and justice. The system, on the whole, 
of law or usage seems to have been mild, and to have been 
administered with equity and clemency. 

The government really governed, and the consequence of 
this was infinite bureaucratic detail and an army of officials 
of all kmds. 

Religion and Ethics. — It is exceedingly difl&cult to 
give an account which shall be at once brief and intelligible, 
and at the same time fairly accurate, of the religion of Egypt, 
the land of the ' thousand gods.' Our desire to attain to a 
unity of view and to discover some central-principle is al- 
most bafiled, and we can, at best, only partially succeed. 

There can be httle doubt that the earliest gods worshipped 
by the Egyptians M^ere, as was natural, the Sun (Ea) and the 
Nile. But some confusion arises from the fact that the same 
gods were worshipped under different names in the various 
cities. 

It would appear, liowever, that a very simple idea lay at 
the root of the Egyptian rehgion. The elements were not 
merely objects of sense, they were living gods ; they had 
their doubles. ' The sky,' says M. Maspero,^ ' the earth, the 
stars, the sun, the Nile, were so many breathing and think- 
ing beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the 
universe. They were worshipped from one end of the valley 
to the other, and the whole nation agreed in proclaiming 
their sovereign power. But when they began to name them, 
to define their powers and attributes, to particularise their 
forms or the relationship which subsisted among them, this 
unanimity was at an end. Each principality, each nome, 
each city, almost every village, conceived and represented 
these differently.' 

Animals and statues were not merely symbolic of the 
gods ; but the gods dwelt in them. Other objects of nature 

1 Maspero's Dawn of Civilisation in the East, p. 85. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 15 

which evoked surprise were worshipped, e. g. sycamore trees 
growing where no tree should be. It is evident that on 
these lines of religious thought, there would be no end to 
the number of gods. ' Each family and almost every indi- 
vidual possessed gods and fetishes which had been pointed 
out for their worship by some fortuitous meeting with an 
animal or an object, or indicated by a dream or a sudden 
intuition' (p. 122). 

The worship was a worship by sacrifice and offerings and 
invocations, wholly with the purpose of securing the help of 
the god or gods in the affairs of life. I cannot find that it 
had any ethical or spiritual significance, save thus far, that 
it was an expression of reverential awe and not of craven 
fear. The ordinary Hebrew also looked for material bless- 
ings, but there was much more than this in his case : his 
worship was essentially the fulfilling of a contract or cove- 
nant — on his side the fulfilment of the moral law, and on 
the other side, the favour of God as God. The detail of sac- 
rifice in the Egyptian temples was most minute, affecting the 
purification and dress of the priest, and the qualifications and 
slaughter of the animals. It was necessary also that the 
priest should repeat the traditionary formulas and prayers 
with absolute exactness and with the authorised intonations 
and rhythm ; otherwise they lost altogether their efficacy. 

The chief of the nome or principality acted as priest in the 
earlier centuries : the high priest of all was the Pharaoh. It 
being vain, however, to expect ritualistic perfection in men 
occupied with other affairs, the custom grew up of associating 
officials as priests with the civil authorities. Thus each tem- 
ple had its staff of priests and a high priest set over them, 
and gradually there grew up a graded hierarchy. These 
temples received numerous gifts and legacies fi'om worship- 
pers seeking favour in this life from the gods, or wishing to 
buy the prayers of the priests when they, the worshippers, 
were dead. The temples thus became wealthy corporations. 

The sacerdotal temple or college had each not only its own 
hierarchy, but its own theology. The god of each nome 



16 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

temple was addressed as the chief god among all the gods 
and as the maker of the world. To Heliopolis, where there 
was a strong priestly college, is due the attempt to arrange 
the chief gods in a hierarchy with one supreme over all the 
rest. The other temples of Egypt accepted this substan- 
tially ; but they naturally reserved the supreme position for 
their own local god. The idea, however, was the same — a 
supreme god working through subordinate agencies in the 
creation of the world. It may be, as M. Maspero says, that 
Egypt, as a whole, never accepted the idea of a one sole god ; ^ 
but in the elevation of the various nomic gods to supremacy, 
the idea of a one supreme god was unquestionably operative. 
The belief in immortality was universal ; but the life be- 
yond the grave suggests to us, m the earlier stages of doctrine, 
nothing better than the Accadian underworld or the Homeric 
Hades. The soul kept the distinctive character and appear- 
ance which pertained to it ' upon the earth ' ; as it had been 
a 'double' before death, so it remained a double after it, 
able to perform all functions of man-life after its own 
fashion. It moved, went, came, spoke, breathed, accepted 
pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechani- 
cally ; rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than 
from any rational desire for immortality. Unceasing regret 
for the bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful 
and inert existence. ' my brother,' are the words of a hymn, 
' withhold not thyself from drinking and from eating, from 
drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following 
thy desire by night and by day ; put not son'ow within thy 
heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth ? The 
West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadow, a place wherein 
its inhabitants when once installed slumber on in their 
mummy forms, never more waking to see their brethren ; 
never more to recognise their fathers or their mothers ; with 
hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The living 
water which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it is for me 

1 It does not follow from this that the more cultured few did not recognise 
a One Supreme Being. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 17 

but stagnant and dead ; that water floweth to all who are on 
earth, while for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water 
that is mine. Since I came into this funereal valley I know 
not where nor what I am. Give me to drink of running 
water ! Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my 
face to the North, that the breeze may caress me and my 
heart be refreshed from its sorrow.' ^ This is a very ancient 
hymn. The conception of the life beyond the grave, how- 
ever, subsequently took a more elevated form, and to secure 
eternal felicity good works had to be done on earth. 

The Book of the Dead (more correctly translated, ' The 
Book of the goings forth to Day '), the sacred Scripture of 
the Egyptians, is in truth a guide book for departed spirits in 
the underworld where they find their way through many 
difhculties, by the help of texts, prayers, and incantations, to 
the presence of OsiKis, god of the dead and of the underworld, 
and his jury ,2 the forty-two judges who are ' Lords of Truth.' 
The confession which the soul is represented as making be- 
fore the god and jury is the most interesting of Egyptian 
theological remains, indicating a marked advance on earlier 
ideas. The soul which is acquitted of evil escapes the mis- 
ery of the underworld as described above, and it does so 
on moral grounds. Having found its way to the halls of 
Osiris in Hades it makes an appeal to Osikis and the jury 
of gods.^ This appeal is of the nature of a confession which, 
however, is chiefly negative. The appellant spirit says 
that he has not been guilty of the oppression of the poor 
and the slave, of assassination, treason, cheating by false 
balances, refusing temple offerings, disregard for temple 
property, lying, stealing, fornication, adultery, blasphemy, 
false witness, and generally that he has not committed any 
crime. The positive part of the confession says that he has 
spread joy on all sides, given bread to the hungry, water 
to the thirsty, clothing to the naked. We have here the 

^ The Dawn of Civilisation, p. 113. 

2 The translations I have read are that of Birch in Bunsen, and that in 
Dr. Davis' recent Book of the Dead. This is sulRcient for my purpose. 

3 Chap. 125 in Davis' edition. 



18 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

ethical creed of the ancient Egyptian, a good working com- 
monplace creed, but nothing more. If we add the proverbs 
and prudential precepts of Ptah-hetep (3600 B.C., the oldest 
book in the world), we probably exhaust the thought of 
the Egyptian on moral and social relations. His relation 
to the gods was, and could be, nothing but abstract adora- 
tion or service in the interests of his own material fehcity. 
It has further to be noted that the bliss which a favourable 
sentence secured to the soul was, in the earlier stages of 
religious development, simply the enjoyment of life in its 
old haunts, somewhat heightened and permanently secured. 
A further advance was manifest when the highest bliss was 
held to be sharing the life of the sun-god, but with power 
to leave the bark of the sun when the soul chose, and enjoy 
earthly life once more. We may, if we choose, call this a 
' blessed immortality.' It certainly was as high a conception 
of the future as any pre-christian nation attained to. 

The question is, was there behind all this polytheistic con- 
fusion any esoteric religious doctrine reserved for the inner 
circle of the priesthood ? If there had been, should we not 
have had some record of it ? One comes across suggestions 
of a mystic esotericism, but in the books I have read I find 
no evidence of it. This much, however, seems fully worthy 
of acceptance, that the myth of Osiris, which embodied the 
idea of the triumph of Light over Darkness, was interpreted 
by the more thoughtful in an ethical sense. Further, that 
the more thoughtful believed in a One God the Source of 
All, Himself the ' Hidden One,' ' Self -begetting ' ; and not to 
be represented by any symbol. The other gods, even when 
addressed as supreme, were so only as operative gods. Many 
of the hymns that survive place beyond all question the 
existence of a belief among the more cultured in a one 
Supreme Being not to be represented by any symbol. I 
give in a footnote Professor Sayce's view,^ which seems to 
me highly probable. 

1 Professor Sayce says (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 60) : * The kernel 
of tlie Egyptian state religion was solar.' At the head of the hierarchies of 
gods we have 'a form of the sun-god.' The priesthood could have no diffi- 



THE HAMITIC RACES 19 

The popular religion was on a mucli lower plane of 
thought than that which we have been endeavouring briefly 
to describe. The worship of animals, on the assumption 
that they were, not merely the visible symbols of gods, but 
their abode, was highly characteristic of the people. It was 
a genuine worship and encouraged by the priests. But this 
animal worship seems, as the nation advanced, to have been 
regarded by all the more educated as merely symbolic. It 
clearly mattered little to the priests of a religion which had 
no special religious moral sanction derived from the essential 
attributes of the 'Hidden God,' what the masses worshipped, 
so long as they were reverent and devotional and obedient.^ 
And this they certainly were. The belief in amulets, charms, 
and incantations was universal. 

Along with the animal worship, and taking universal 
precedence of it, the visible objects of worship were always 
the Sun and the Nile. The following, which I quote from 
the ' Eecords of the Past,' vol. iv. (including the notes), is as 
l^lte as the 19th Dynasty (1400 B.C.). It will be noted that 
the names of gods are frequently interchangeable, and fur- 

culty in accepting this physical symbol of the creative and life-giving source 
of all. It was to Ptah, the ' personal ' creator, that the sacred bull was 
dedicated, in which he was incarnate. Nor is the above central conception 
inconsistent with the cosmogonic system, as given by Professor Sayce, which 
seems to be prior to the Theban Dynasty. ' In the philosophic system of the 
priesthood,' he says, 'Nun, or Chaos, was the first cause from wluch all pro- 
ceed — unshaped, eternal, and immutable matter. Kheper, the scarabaeus 
with the sun's disk, was the creative principle of life, which implanted in 
matter the seeds of life and light. Ptah, "the opener," was the personal 
creator or demiurge, who, along with the seven knumu, or architects, gave 
form to these seeds, and was at once the creator and opener of the pi'im:eval 
egg of the universe (the ball of earth rolled along by Kheper), out of which 
came the sun and moon according to the older myth, the elements and forms 
of heaven and earth, according to the later philosophy. Nut, the sky, with 
the star and boat of the sun on her back ; Sell, the earth, sjmibol of time and 
eternity, and Amenti, or Hades, now took their several shapes and places. 
Over this threefold world, the gods and other divine beings presided.' 

^ Almost all nations which have attained to civilisation have entered on 
the possession of lands already inhabited by inferior races. It is not improb- 
able that animal worship was a continuation of the Totemism of the original 
occupants of the Nile Valley. 



20 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

ther, that the devotional writer frequently passes from the 
particular god to the Universal Source of Order and Life — 
a natural transition common enough in all poetry, and con- 
stantly to be met with in Egyptian writings. 

HYMN TO THE NILE 

STROPHE I 
Adoration of the Nile 

1 Hail to thee, Nile ! 

2 Thou showest thyself in this land, 

3 Coming in peace, giving life to Egypt : 

4 AMMON, (thou) leadest night unto day,^ 

5 A leading that rejoices the heart ! 

6 Overflowing the gardens created by ra.^ 

7 Giving hfe to all animals ; 

8 Watering the land without ceasing : 

9 The way of heaven descending : ^ 

10 Lover of food, bestower of corn, 

11 Giving light to every home, ptah ! 

n 

1 Lord of fishes, when the inundation returns 

2 No fowls fall on the cultures.* 

3 Maker of spelt ; creator of wheat : 

4 "Who maintaineth the temples ! 

1 If this rendering is correct the meaning mnst be that the god of the Nile 
is the secret sonrce of light ; see sec. iii. 1. 5, and sec. viii. 1. 1. The attributes 
of Egyptian gods, who represent the unknown under various aspects, are 
interchangeable to a great extent ; here the Nile is Ammon, doing also the 
work of Ra. Dr. Birch suggests that the rendering may be ' hiding his course 
night and day.' 

2 Ra, the sun-god, who is represented as delighting in flowers, see Eitual 
of the Dead, Ixxxvi. : ' I am the pure lily which comes out of the fields of 
Ra.' 

3 The Nile-god traverses heaven ; his course there corresponds to that of 
the river on earth. 

* See X. 6. This is obscure, but it may mean that the Nile-god protects 
the newly-sown fields from the birds. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 21 

5 Idle hands lie loathes ^ 

6 For myriads, for all the wretched. 

7 If the gods in heaven are grieved,^ 

8 Then sorrow cometh on men. 



Ill 



1 He maketh the whole land open to the oxen,* 

2 And the great and the small are rejoicing, 

3 The response of men at his coming ! * 

4 His likeness is num ! ^ 

5 He shineth, and then the land exulteth ! 

6 All bellies are in joy ! 

7 Every creature receives nourishment ! 

8 All teeth get food. 

rv 

1 Bringer of food ! Great Lord of provisions ! 

2 Creator of all good things ! 

3 Lord of terrors ® and of choicest joys ! 

4 All are combined in him. 

5 He produceth grass for the oxen ; 

6 Providing victims for every god. 

7 The choice incense is that which he supplies, 

8 Lord in both regions, 

9 He filleth the granaries, enricheth the storehouses, 
10 He careth for the state of the poor. 

V 

1 He causes growth to fulfil all desires, 

2 He never wearies of it. 

^ /. e. he sets them at work. Thus, Ritual, xv. 20 : ' Ea, the giver of food, 
destroys all place for idleness, cuts off all excuse.' 

2 As they are by idleness ; see Ritual, cxxv. p. 255, Birch. 

^ /. e. he makes it ready for cultivation. 

* Their joy and gratitude respond to his advance. 

^ Num is the Nile-god regarded as giving life. 

6 The Egyptian word corresponds to Apcracpris, which, according to Plutarch, 
signifies tJ) dpSp€7ov, Isis et Osiris, c. 37. The Egyptians, like all ancient 
people, identify terror with strength or greatness. 



22 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

3 He maketh his might a buckler.^ 

4 He is not graven in marble,^ 

5 As an image bearing the double crown. 

6 He is not beheld : 

7 He bath neither ministrants nor offerings ; 

8 He is not adored in sanctuaries : 

9 His abode is not known : 

10 JS"o shrine is found with painted figures.* 



VI 

1 There is no building that can contain him ! ■* 

2 There is no councillor in thy heart ! 

3 Thy youth delight in thee, thy children : 

4 Thou directest ^ them as King, 

5 Thy law is established in the whole land, 

6 In the presence of thy servants of the North : ^ 

7 Every eye is satisfied with him : '' 

8 He careth for the abundance of his blessings. 

VII 

1 The inundation comes (then), conieth rejoicing : 

2 Every heart exulteth : 

1 This scriptural phrase comes in abruptly. It is probably drawn from 
some older source. 

2 The true deity \_i.e. the supreme god of gods], is not represented by any 
image. This is a relic of primaeval monotheism, out of place as referring to 
the Nile, but pointing to a deeper and sounder faith. Compare the laws of 
Manu, i. 5-7. 

2 See last line of sec. xiii. There are no shrines covered, as usual, 
•with coloured hieroglyphics. The whole of this passage is of extreme im- 
I^ortance, showing that, apart from all olijects of idolatrous worship, the old 
Egyptian recognised the existence of a Supreme God, unknown and incon- 
ceivable, the true source of all power and goodness. Compare the oldest forms 
of the 17th chapter of the funeral ritual in Lepsius, Aelteste Texte. 

* 1 Kings viii. 27. 

^ Or, ' thou givest them counsels, orderest all their goings. ' 

^ I. e. ' all magistrates are the servants of the deity, and administer his law 
from south to north.' 

^ Maspero, ' par lui est bue I'eau (les pleurs) de tons les yeux,' i. e. ' wipes 
away tears from all eyes.' 



THE HAMITIC RACES 23 

3 The tooth of the crocodiles, the children of neith ^ 

4 (Even) the circle of the gods who are counted with thee. 

5 Doth not its outburst water the fields, 

6 Overcoming mortals (with joy) ; 

7 Watering one to produce another ? * 

8 There is none who worketh with him ; 

9 He produces food without the aid of neith.^ 
10 Mortals he causes to rejoice. 

VIII 

1 He giveth light on his coming from darkness : * 

2 In the pastures of his cattle 

3 His might produceth all : 

4 What was not, his moisture bringeth to life. 

5 Men are clothed to fill his gardens : 

6 He careth for his labourers. 

7 He maketh even and noontide, 

8 He is the infinite ptah and kabes.® 

9 He createth all works therein, 

10 All writings, all sacred words, 

11 All his implements in the North.® 



IX 

1 He enters with words the interior of his house,''' 

2 When he willeth he goeth forth from his mystic fane. 

3 Thy wrath is destruction of fishes.* 

^ Dr. Birch, to whom I am indebted for this rendering, observes that the 
goddess Neith is often represented with two crocodiles sucking her breasts. 

^ I. e. ' The Nile fills all mortals with the languor of desire, and gives 
fecundity. ' 

^ I.e. 'without needing rain, the gift of the goddess of heaven.' Such 
seems to be the meaning of a very obscure passage. 

* See note on section i. 

s The meaning is evidently that he combines the attributes of Ptah, the 
Demiurge, and Kabes, an unknown god. 

^ All things serviceable to man — arms, implements, &c. 

' This seems to mean, he gives oracles at his shrine. Observe the incon- 
sistency of this with section 5. 

^ Causing scarcity of food in the land. See Exodus viii. 18, 21. 



24 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

4 Then men implore thee for the waters of the season,* 

5 That the Thebaid may be seen like the Delta, 

6 That every man be seen bearing his tools, 

7 No man left behind his comrade ! 

8 Let the clothed be unclothed, 

9 No adornments for the sons of nobles, 

10 No circle of gods in the night ! 

11 The response (of the god) is refreshing water, 

12 Filling all men with fatness. 

X 

1 Establisher of justice ! men rejoice 

2 "With flattering words to worship ^ thee, 

3 Worshipped together with the mighty water ! 

4 Men present offerings of corn, 

5 Adoring all the gods : 

6 No fowls fall on the land.^ 

7 Thy hand is adorned with gold,* 

8 As moulded of an ingot of gold, 

9 Precious as pure lapis lazuli ; ^ 

10 Corn in its state of germination is not eaten. 



XI 

1 The hymn is addressed to thee with the harp ; 

2 It is played with a (skilful) hand to thee ! 

3 The youths rejoice at thee ! 

4 Thy own children. 

5 Thou hast rewarded their labour. 

6 There is a great one adorning the land ; 

^ In a season of scarcity prayers are offered for supply of water. The 
following lines seem to describe great haste when the inundation comes on ; 
none wait for their clothing, even when valuable, and the nightly solemnities 
are broken up. But the passage is obscure. 

2 Literally answer, i. e. ' with thanks and prayers, when thou bringest the 
water in abundance.' 

3 See ii. 2. 

* The gold represents the preciousness of the gift of food. 
5 This is often mentioned in the inscriptions amongst the most precious 
stones. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 25 

7 An enlightener, a buckler in front of men, 

8 Quickening the heart in depression, 

9 Loving the increase of all his cattle. 

XII 

1 Thou shinest in the city of the King ; 

2 Then the householders are satiated with good things, 

3 The poor man laughs at the lotus.'' 

4 All things are perfectly ordered, 

5 Every kind of herb for thy children. 

6 If food should fail, 

7 All enjoyment is cast on the ground, 

8 The land falls in weariness. 

XIII 

1 inundation of Nile, offerings are made to thee : 

2 Oxen are slain to thee : 

3 Great festivals are kept for thee ; 

4 Fowls are sacrificed to thee ; 

5 Beasts of the field are caught for thee ; 

6 Pure flames are offered to thee ; 

7 Offerings are made to every god, 

8 As they are made unto Nile. 

9 Incense ascends unto heaven, 

10 Oxen, bulls, fowls are burnt ! 

11 Nile makes for himself chasms in the Thebaid ; ' 

12 Unknown is his name in heaven, 

13 He doth not manifest his forms ! 

14 Vain are all representations ! ^ 

XIV 

1 Mortals extol (him), and the cycle of gods ! 

2 Awe is felt by the terrible ones ; 

3 His son * is made Lord of all, 

1 Which he ate when he could get nothing else. 

2 An allusion to the legend that the Nile comes forth from two openings 
in the south. 

3 See V. last line. * The Pharaoh. 



26 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

4 To enlighten all Egypt.^ 

5 Shine forth, shine forth, Nile ! shine forth ! 

6 Giving life to men by his oxen : 

7 Giving life to his oxen by the pastures ! 

8 Shine forth in glory, Nile ! 

But while the Nile and the Sun were always the supreme 
visible gods to the Egyptian, from a very early date the 
symbol of supreme divine power, as manifested in nature, 
did not restrict itself to these deities, but extended to ani- 
mals as symbolic of various gods ; and, in the course of time, 
there can be little doubt that with the masses nothing 
remained but the symbol, with a vague sense of some divine 
power behind it.^ This vague sense was, however, undoubtedly 
there, and its existence could alone justify Eanke's view that 
there was nothing secular to the ancient Egyptian ; ' properly 
speaking, there was nothing profane in the land.' * What 
most struck Herodotus, when, in the middle of the fifth 
century before the Christian era, he visited the country, was 
the extreme religiosity of its inhabitants. ' The Egyptians,' 
he says, ' are religious to excess, far beyond any other race 
of men. They themselves speak of the " thousand gods." ' 
The greater portion of the description of Egypt by the Greek 
historian is occupied with an account of the priests, the 
temples, and the religious ceremonies. In the architectural 
remains, we. see that the temple dominates the palace, and is 

1 The two regions, , 

2 'Who does not know,' says Juvenal (xv. 1), 'what kinds of monsters 
demented Egypt worships ? ' 

3 The animal worship reached its culmination at Memphis in the worship 
of the sacred bull, known as Hapi, or Apis, an incarnation of the god phthah. 
He had a temple, priestly attendants, and a harem of cows. He was brought out 
on the occasion of great processions and was worshipped by the people. When 
he died he was embalmed and buried in a polished granite sarcophagus.* It 
is a remarkable spectacle the mixture which Egypt presents of ' high spiritual 
conceptions with debased animal worship' (to borrow Professor Sayce's ex- 
pression). I cannot identify the 'high spiritual conceptions' to which Pro- 
fessor Sayce refers, at least as far as the commonalt}' was concerned. 

* The cost of his funeral is said to have been about 20,000?. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 27 

itself dominated by the tomb, both the temple and the tomb 
being the expression of religious ideas. Everywhere in 
Egypt gigantic structures upreared themselves into the air, 
enriched with all that Egyptian art could supply of painted 
and sculptured decoration, dedicated to the honour, and bear- 
ing the sacred name, of some divinity. The great temple of 
each city was the centre of its life. A perpetual ceremonial 
of the richest kind went on within its walls ; along its shady 
corridors, or through its sunlit courts, long processions made 
their way up or down its avenues of sphinxes. The calendar 
was crowded with festivals, and a week rarely passed with- 
out the performance of some special religious ceremony 
possessing its own peculiar attractions.^ 

The sentiment of religious awe in the contemplation of the 
facts of life and death, did not interfere with practical activ- 
ity or the enjoyment of life. The mental attitude of the 
Egyptian is, in part at least, well expressed in the festal song 
which was so universally popular among them. 



FESTAL DIRGE 

1 Wanting 

2 The song of the house of king antup, deceased, which is 
(written) in front of 

3 The player on the harp.^ 
All hail to the good Prince, 
the worthy good (man) ! 

The body is fated (1) to pass away, 
the atoms 

4 remain, ever since the time of the ancestors. 

The gods who were beforetime rest in their tombs, 
the mummies 

5 of the saints likewise are enwrapped in their tombs. 

They who build houses, and they who have no houses, see ! 

1 The above sentences seem to be a quotation from some one — probably 
Rawlinson or Wilkinson, I forget which. 

^ The Song of the Harper in the tomb of Nefer-hotep bears a great resem- 
blance to this composition ; see Dumichen, ffistorische Inschriftcn, ii. pi. 40. 



28 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

6 what becomes of them. 

I have heard the words of imhotep ^ and hartatep.* 
It is said in their sayings, 

7 After all, what is prosperity 1 
Their fenced walls are dilapidated. 

Their houses are as that which has never existed. 

8 No man comes from thence 
who tells of their savings, 
who tells of their affairs, 
who encourages our hearts. 
Ye go 

9 to the place whence they return not.^ 

Strengthen thy heart to forget how thou hast enjoyed thyself, 
fulfil thy desire whilst thou livest. 

10 Put oils upon thy head, 

clothe thyself with fine linen adorned with precious metals, 

11 with the gifts of God 
multiply thy good things, 
yield to thy desire, 

fulfil thy desire with thy good things 

12 (whilst thou art) upon earth 
according to the dictation of thy heart. 
The day will come to thee, 

when one hears not the voice 

when the one who is at rest hears not 

13 their voices.* 

Lamentations deliver not him who is in the tomb. 

14 Feast in tranquillity,^ 

seeing that there is no one who carries away his goods with 

him. 
Yea, behold, none who goes thither comes back again. ^ 

1 Imhotep, the son of the primaeval deity Ptah, was the mythical author of 
various arts and sciences. The Greeks spelt the name Imopth, but more fre- 
quently substituted the name Asclepios. 

2 Hartatef was the son of King Menkera (Mycerinus), to whom the discov- 
ery of part of the Ritual (cap. Ixiv.) is attributed, and who was the author of 
a mystical work. 

3 Compare the Assyrian phrase ' The land men cannot return from.' 
'Descent of Ishtar,' Eecords of the Past, vol. i. p. 143; ii. p. 5. 
* I.e. ' of the mourners.' ^ Here follows a lacuna. 

^ From Eecords of the Fast, iv. 117. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 29 

The beliefs and worship of the Egyptians, while giving 
expression to a sombre rehgious sentiment and a feeling of 
profound awe in contemplating Nature, the life of man and 
above all the stern fact of Death, exercised great influence 
in teaching reverence generally, and consequently submis- 
siveness and obedience. But they had little moral signifi- 
cance. The only potent ethical force in the system of 
religious thought was the belief in immortality. When this 
had fully emerged from its cruder form of ancestor worship, 
it assumed a character which places it on a high level, and 
far above the conceptions of the Greeks and Romans. A 
great and godlike future life was secured by a good life on 
earth. The human spirit which had been weighed in the 
balances of the Hall of Osiris returned to the God of Light, 
but yet retained its individuality. There arose in connection 
with this an ideal of conduct. That this ideal was under- 
stood or fully realised by the masses it is absurd to suppose. 
Indeed, among all classes the morality seems to have been 
often as low in practice as it was elevated in theory. But 
what shall we say of Christianity itself after 1900 years of 
existence ? The following dirge well expresses the higher 
thought on life and immortality and reveals the undercur- 
rent of melancholy in the Egyptian mind. 

THE SO:t^G OF THE HARPER 

Chanted hy the singer to the harp who is in the chapel of the 
Osirian, the Patriarch of Amen, the blessed Nefer-hotep. 

He says : 

The great one is truly at rest, 

the good charge is fulfilled. 

Men pass away since the time of ra,^ 

and the youths come in their stead. 

Like as ra reappears every morning, 

and TUM ^ sets in the horizon, 

men are begetting, 

1 The sun. 

* A form of the suu god of the west, the chief god of Heliopolis. 



30 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

and women are conceiving. 

Every nostril inhaletli once the breezes of dawn, 

but all born of women go down to their places. 

Make a good day, holy father ! 

Let odours and oils stand before thy nostril. 

"Wreaths of lotus are on the arms and the bosom of thy sister, 

dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee. 

Let song and music be before thy face, 

and leave behind thee all evil cares ! 

Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage, 

when we draw near the land which loveth silence. 

Not . . . . -^ peace of heart . . . . ^ his loving son. 

Make a good day, blessed nbperhotep, 

thou Patriarch perfect and pure of hands ! 

He finished his existence . . (the common fate of men). 

Their abodes pass away, 

and their place is not ; 

they are as they had never been born 

since the time of ra. 

(They in the shades) are sitting on the bank of the river, 

thy soul is among them, drinking its sacred water, 

following thy heart, at peace .... 

Give bread to him whose field is barren, 

thy name will be glorious in posterity for evermore ; 

they will look upon thee .... 

(The Priest clad in tlie skin) ^ of a panther will pour to the ground, 

and bread will be given as offerings ; 

the singing women .... 

Their forms are standing before ra, 

their persons are protected .... 

BANNU * will come at her hour, 

1 Lacuna. ^ Lacuna. 

3 The panther's skin was the special characteristic of the dress of the priest 
of Khem, the vivifier. 

* Eannu, an Egyptian goddess who presided over the harvest. 

Someone, I think, has suggested that the esoteric doctrine of the priest- 
hood was this : The self-begetting Hidden One gives birth to Osiris the 
animating principle (Light of God and of life after death), and Isis as 
Nature — the manifestation of this principle in conflict with Set — darkness 
and evil. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 31 

and SHU will calculate his day, 

thou shalt awake .... (woe to the bad one !) 

He shall sit miserable in the heat of infernal fires. 

Make a good day, holy father, 

NBFERHOTEP, pure of hands. 

No works of buildings in Egypt could avail, 

his resting place is all his wealth .... 

Let me return to know what remaineth of him ! 

Not the least moment could be added to his life, 

(when he went to) the realm of eternity. 

Those who have magazines full of bread to spend 

even they shall encounter the hour of a last end. 

The moment of that day will diminish the valour of the 

rich .... 

Mind thee of the day, when thou too shalt start for the land, 

to which one goeth to return not thence. 

Good for thee then will have been (an honest life), 

therefore be just and hate transgressions, 

for he who loveth justice (will be blessed), 

The coward and the bold, neither can fly, (the grave) 

the friendless and proud are alike .... 

Then let thy bounty give abundantly as is fit, 

(love) truth, and isis shall bless the good, 

(and thou shalt attain a happy) old age.^ 

Literature and Art. — Intellectually, the Egyptians must 
take high rank, though they cannot for a moment compare 
w^ith the great European races whose rise was later — the 
Greeks and Romans. Their minds possessed much subtlety 
and acuteness ; they were fond of literary composition ; they 
made great advances in most of the arts and sciences and 
were in every department of life intelligent and ingenious. 
It is astonishing what an extensive literature they possessed 
at a very early date — books on religion, on morals, law, 
rhetoric, arithmetic, mensuration, geometry, medicine, books 
of travels, and, above all, novels ! There were many poems 

1 From Records of the Past, vi. 129. 



32 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

also, and some of the love-stories, it is said, are fairly good.^ 
As early as the 6th Dynasty (3500 B.C.) an official bears the 
title of ' Governor of the House of Books. ' But the literary 
merit of the Egyptian works is slight. The novels, we are 
informed by Egyptologists, are vapid and often licentious, the 
medical treatises interlarded with charms and exorcisms, the 
travels devoid of interest, the general style of all the books 
forced and stilted. Egypt is said to have stimulated Greek 
speculation by some of its doctrines ; but otherwise it cannot 
be said that the world owes much of its purely intellectual 
progress to this people, about whose literary productions, it 
is said by experts, there is always something that is weak, if 
not childish. The rhythmically constructed book of practical 
precepts by Ptah-hetep^ already referred to as the oldest 
book in the world is, however, valuable for its counsels, as 
well as its practical sagacity. Philosophic speculation seems 
to have received no contribution from the higher doctrines of 
the priesthood. 

In Art, the power which the Egyptians exhibited was 
greater than in thought ; but the very highest qualities of art 
were wanting, although there was a period when it attained 
to great excellence in bas-reliefs and colour. That it did not 
make greater progress is a matter for surprise to anyone who 
will look at the wooden head to which the date 3700 B.C. is 
assigned and a drawing of which will be found in Brugsch's 
'History' and Maspero's 'Egyptian Archseology.' In one 
department, however, it was art of a very high order, for the 
architecture produces its effect not only by its mass, according 
to Fergusson (' History of Architecture '), but also by its har- 
mony of proportion. He says that the Hall in Karnak ' is 
the noblest effort of architectural magnificence ever produced 
by the hand of man.' The skill exhibited in overcoming diffi- 
culties in construction is also marvellous. In building, sculp- 

1 Professor Flinders Petrie has issued translations of stories from tbe 
papyri. 

2 Or Ptah-hotep, as in Records of the Past, in vol. iii. of which the Pre- 
cepts are translated. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 33 

ture, and colour decoration generally, we find in Egypt the 
' dawn of artistic development for the whole human race.' 
(Eanke.) 

Social Condition. — The classes were so separated one 
from another that it was long believed that the caste system 
prevailed, as among the Hindus. It was not so, however ; 
there was no rigid and compulsory system of division. In a 
general way, it would seem to be right to adopt the classifica- 
tion of Strabo, and to say that the entire free population of 
Egypt which did not belong to the sacerdotal or the military 
order, formed a sort of third estate, which admitted of sub- 
divisions, but is properly to be regarded as politically a single 
body. The soldiers and the priests were privileged : the rest 
of the community was without privilege of any kind ; but 
the recognised usages and customs, as well as law, gave them 
protection. 

Of all the classes, that of the priests was the most power- 
ful, and the most carefully organised. Priests often held 
important political offices ; they served m the army also, and 
received rich gifts for their services. Many of them accumu- 
lated great wealth through these secular employments, and 
their residences were of a luxurious kind. But they were 
only partially hereditary and grew up into an established 
Order slowly. They were divided into several classes ; and 
next to them came four orders of prophets, and below them 
again the ' divine fathers.' Sacred scribes and servitors were 
attached to the temples. In the precincts, monks occupied 
cells. There were also priestesses, and prophetesses (among 
whom were to be found women of the highest rank), the 
singing women, and the sistrum players of the ' Hidden One.' 
The priests and their families and subordinate ministers 
were maintained out of the revenues of the temple and 
formed a corporation. 

Besides agriculture and the trades and handicrafts in which 
so many of the Egyptians found occupation for their time and 
talents, a considerable portion of the population pursued 
employments of a more elevated and intellectual character. 

3 



34 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Sculpture, painting, and music had their respective votaries, 
and engaged the services of a large number of artists. If 
dancing is to be viewed as a ' fine art,' we may add to these 
the paid dancers, who were numerous, but were not held in 
very high estimation. 

Of learned professions in Egypt outside the priesthood, the 
most important was that of the Scribe, which might be called 
the literary profession, though not in the sense of authorship. 
Though writing (at least the cursive or demotic in later 
times, about 900 B.C.) was an ordinary accomplishment of 
the industrial classes, and scribes were not, therefore, so 
absolutely necessary as in most Eastern countries for general 
correspondence, yet there was still a large number of occupa- 
tions for which professional penmanship was a pre-requisite, 
and others that demanded legal knowledge, and skill in 
forms of transfer and of business and in the due recording of 
ceremonials and contracts. Moreover, a scribe would often 
profess not only the demotic cursive script, but also the 
ideographic ^ and hieratic, and then his prospects of promotion 
were considerable. The Egyptian religion necessitated the 
multiphcation of copies of the ' Eitual of the Dead,' and the 
employment of numerous clerks in the registration of the 
sacred treasures and the management of the sacred estates : 
also librarians for the care and multiplication of MSS. The 
civil administration also depended largely upon a system of 
registration and of official reports which were perpetually 
being made to the court by the superintendents in all depart- 
ments of the public service, which was a highly organised 
bureaucracy. Most private persons of large means, also, kept 
bailiffs or secretaries who made up their accounts, paid their 
labourers, and otherwise acted as managers of their property. 
In commerce of all kinds scribes were indispensable. There 
were thus numerous lucrative posts which could be properly 
filled only by persons who were ready with the pen, familiar 
with the different kinds of writing, and good at figures. The 

1 The ideographic or hieroglyphic was picture-writing, but even in early 
times the hieratic which represented the sounds of words was invented. 



TEE HAMITIC RACES 35 

occupation of scribe was regarded as one befitting men from 
the middle ranks of society, who might otherwise have been 
blacksmiths, carpenters, small farmers, or the like. If scribes 
failed to obtain government appointments, they might still 
hope to have their services engaged by the rich corporations 
which had the management of the Temples, or by private 
individuals of good means, or in business houses. Hence the 
scribe readily persuaded himself that his occupation was the 
first and best of all human employments. And assuming 
that Tiele and others are correct in saying that the priest- 
hood was only partially hereditary, the scribes would natur- 
ally look to the priestly profession as a possible occupation 
bringing both money and influence. 

The great number of persons who practised Medicine in 
Egypt is mentioned by Herodotus, who further notices the 
remarkable fact that, besides general practitioners, there were 
many who devoted themselves to special branches of medical 
science, some being oculists, some dentists, some skilled in 
treating diseases of the brain, some those of the intestines, 
and so on. According to a modern authority, the physicians 
constituted a special subdivision of the sacerdotal order ; but 
this statement is open to question, though physicians may 
have belonged for the most part to the priest class. 

The profession of Architect in some respects took pre- 
cedence over any other. The chief court architect was a 
functionary of the highest importance, ranking among the 
most exalted officials. Considering the character of the 
duties entrusted to him, this was only natural, since the kings 
generally set more store upon their buildings than upon any 
other matter. Religion and architecture were closely associ- 
ated. ' At the time when the construction of the pyramids 
and other tombs,' says Brugsch, ' demanded artists of the first 
order, we find the place of architect entrusted to the highest 
dignitaries of the court of the Pharaohs. The royal architects 
recruited their ranks not unfrequently from the class of 
princes ; and the inscriptions engraved upon the walls of 
their tombs inform us that, almost without exception, they 



36 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

married either the daughters or the grand-daughters of the 
reigning sovereigns, who did not refuse the architect this 
honour.' Schools of architects had to be formed in order to 
secure a succession of competent persons, and the chief archi- 
tect of the king was only the most successful out of many 
aspirants, who were educationally and socially upon a par. 
Practical builders and the ordinary sculptors constituted a 
lower class. It has been well said that the Egyptians might 
be classed apart as a nation of monumental builders. We 
can understand the importance assigned to the profession of 
architect. 

Finally, Engineering must have been an important 
profession in a land of irrigation and embankments. 

Women. — The relations of the sexes were decidedly on 
a better footing in Egypt than at Athens or in Greece gen- 
erally, save perhaps in Sparta. Not only was polygamy rare 
among the inhabitants of the Nile Valley (although per- 
mitted by law), but woman even took her proper rank as 
the friend and companion of man. She was never secluded 
in a harem, but constantly made her appearance alike in 
private company and in the ceremonies of religion, possessed 
equal rights with man in the eye of the law, shared equally 
with her brothers in her father's estate, was attached to 
temples in a quasi-sacerdotal character, and might ascend 
the throne and administer the government. Even among 
the poorest classes the rights of the women were respected. 
She shared equally with her brothers in any inheritance 
there might be, and was left free to manage and direct the 
household. Her occupations were water-carrying, grinding 
the grain, and making bread for the daily consumption. She 
span, wove, and made and mended the few clothes required 
in the Egyptian climate. If she was the wife of an agri- 
culturist, she went to market to sell poultry and eggs and 
the butter she had made, or the linen she had woven. A 
large family was regarded as a blessing ; and it may be easily 
understood, consequently, that the wife and mother had a 
hard life and grew prematurely old. But she had freedom 



THE HAMITIC RACES 37 

to come and go as she pleased, with uncovered face, and talk 
with whom she pleased. Among the labouring classes, how- 
ever, the woman who lived with a man was not always 
married to him ; and among the well-to-do, concubinage was 
not uncommon. 

Meanwhile the mass of the people — the fellahin — were 
as poor, oppressed, and miserable as in modern times. They 
lived from day to day and hand to mouth. Their chief 
virtue was obedience to their superiors, and they were well 
inured to the ' stick.' Forced labour was common. The 
craftsmen formed corporations and depended on their * mas- 
ters ' or presidents for the recognition of their rights and for 
justice. The monuments, it seems, bear witness to the fact 
that both peasants and artisans were, notwithstanding their 
poverty and oppression, a cheerful race and fond of merri- 
ment. This is quite possible ; for we often find a ' happy-go- 
lucky ' spirit and an enjoyment of the passing hour among 
people who are quite at the bottom of the social scale. They 
have been trained by circumstances to improvidence ; they 
cannot fall lower, and to rise higher is almost impossible. 

To sum up : Taken as a whole we may say that the 
ancient Egyptians, or, let us say, the ' average man ' among 
them was, intellectually, eminently practical. His religion 
was not a reasoned or philosophic religion even in its highest 
forms. It was, in its highest form, the fruit of a dreamy med- 
itation on the broad aspects of life and death rather than of 
speculative analysis ; in its vulgar form a mixture of animal 
worship and debased superstitions. In ethics his morality 
was preceptive and dogmatic — not a subject of philosophic 
investigation. His artistic tastes were limited to the sym- 
bolic and realistic and did not embrace ideal forms, save in 
architecture ; and even in architecture the grandeur is due 
to its symbolic character. Personally, he was grave and 
serious, industrious, orderly, kindly, peaceable, and submis- 
sive. And, with all his gravity and seriousness he (as we 
now learn from Egyptologists) seems to have enjoyed life 
and to have been fond of merriment. 



38 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

The preceding synopsis of Egyptian life (as accurate as I 
can make it in so short a space) shows that in this Nile 
Valley a highly civilised people, among whom the art of 
government was organised down to the minutest bureaucratic 
detail, existed as a community under monarchs for more than 
4,000 years before Christ. ' With the 4th Dynasty ' (4235 
B.C.), says M. Mariette, ' Egypt emerges from the obscurity 
with which it is, till then, surrounded, and we are enabled to 
date facts by the help of the monuments. . . . The 4th 
Dynasty marks a culminating point in the history of the 
kingdom. By an extraordinary movement forward, Egypt 
threw off all trammels and emerged in the full glory of a 
fully developed civilisation. Erom this moment class dis- 
tinctions were recognised in Egyptian society, and art 
attained a breadth and dignity that even in later and more 
brilliant days were hardly surpassed.' ^ 

Even Chinese civilisation is a thing of yesterday as com- 
pared with the Egyptian. Here we see what a nation, prac- 
tically excluded from alien influences, could accomplish for 
its own indigenous growth in political life, in social justice, 
in the arts and sciences, and in education. It was overrun, 
rather than conquered, by the Hyksos, Assyrians, Persians, 
Greeks, and Eomans. The country seems to have gone on 
its way very little influenced by foreign interference with its 
native dynasties. It is this that makes Egypt so interesting 
a study in world-history. Its geographical position secured its 
originality. Doubtless it had to pay a price for its exclusive- 
ness, for it suffered from the absence of the stimulus which 
almost all civilised nations have received from imported 
ideas. 

EDUCATION IN EGYPT 

The Education of a nation is to be found in the character- 
istics of its civilisation. It has educated itself by every pro- 
gressive step it takes in religion, politics, justice, arts, and 

1 Maviette's Outlines, translated by Miss Brodrick. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 39 

thought. The ever-accumulating tradition of the people is 
passed on from parents to children and made permanent in 
institutions. The present has been created by the past. In 
the above endeavour, then, to estimate the character, life, and 
institutions of ancient Egypt, we have been virtually giving 
an account of its national education. 

The education of the young Egyptian, in brief, was through 
the rehgion, morality, law, and social customs of his native 
land. The general influences of the inherited civilisation 
would of course be felt in different ways according to the 
social position and opportunities of the children. Compared 
with the youth of other nations the Egyptian of the lower 
classes grew up, we may think, too patient of toil and the 
stick; but, spite of the oppressive conditions of life, there 
seem to have been prevalent a mildness, kindness, and equity 
of disposition and a simplicity of life and domestic relations 
which an organised educational system might have failed to 
secure. I should say that they compared very favourably as 
regards their moral trainmg and their sentiments of religious 
reverence with the lowest stratum in Great Britain now. 
All, however, lacked the education which free political life 
gives, and we find that, where this is the case, it operates to 
deprive men of initiative, reacting on the whole intellectual 
life, making it torpid and content with the status quo, what- 
ever that may be. Doubtless, the political constitution was, 
to begin with, itself an expression of a certain racial temper- 
ament, but it reacted on the popular mind so as to confirm 
natural predisposition. If we may make a distinction be- 
tween individuality and that personality which comes into 
life along with the free exercise of self-conscious reason, we 
should say that there was in the ancient Egyptian a marked 
individuality exhibiting itself in a keen practical intelligence, 
but that personality as we find it in European nations was 
absent. Nor do we find this sense of personality, with 
which is always associated the idea of self-direction and self- 
government, in any of the Oriental races, except the Persians 
(and that empire was a short-lived phenomenon) and the 



40 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Jews; and it is interesting to note that this strong sense 
of personality existed, in both cases, side by side with an 
intense monotheism. This fact suggests many thoughts 
which would be here out of place. 

The practical intelligence of the Egyptian race had an 
immense field for its activity. They had to devise the 
engineering works which enabled them to utihse the Nile ; 
and every year they had a recurring struggle to maintaui 
their supremacy over it. With comparatively little foreign 
trade they had themselves to produce the articles of necessity 
and luxury which a growing nation requires. Thus all the 
industrial arts flourished, and, apart from the professions, 
every boy had an industrial or technical education from 
his own father. We are told in these days that manual 
work is educative, but how much more educative the pro- 
longed and careful training required for the acquisition of 
a skilled trade with all its traditions ! The Egyptian boy 
had this. 

On the spiritual side he was under powerful influences, 
he breathed an atmosphere of mystery and awe, and lived 
in the constant presence of gods, and in expectation of im- 
mortality. His crude conceptions of the unseen were, it is 
true, associated with magic and sorcery ; ^ but has modern 
Europe no superstitions equally absurd ? We boast our- 
selves of our rehgion, but it is difiicult for us with all our 
affected superiority to realise the extent to which the con- 
stant presence of unseen powers pressed on the daily life 
of a race like the Egyptians. We look back with a feehng 
akin to contempt on their faith in magic, sorcery and in- 
cantations, forgetting that the more educated classes have 
merely to give the word and one half of Christendom would, 
even now, be plunged to the neck in similar beliefs. 

In the bringing up of children there seems to have been 

1 Mr. Flinders Petrie, in Ten Years' Digging, says that the modern 
fellahin are a prey to gross superstition and worshippers of innumerable 
local saints, and full of faith in magic and charms. This was equally true 
of their ancestors 6,000 years ago, under a totally different religious system. 



THE HAMITIG RACES 41 

much kindliness. They had their toys and games and 
nursery stories like other children all the world over. 

Instruction of the People. — It is possible that the 
facilities for obtaining school instruction in ancient Egypt 
have been much exaggerated.^ But, theoretically at least, 
all that was known or knowable was open to all except 
such esoteric doctrines (if any) as the higher priesthood may 
have possessed. There is evidence that if there were not 
numerous elementary schools scattered over the country, 
yet teachers might always be had, and that reading and writ- 
ing and the elements of arithmetic were accessible to those 
who desu'ed instruction. There is no evidence, however, it 
seems to me, that the labouring class received any benefit 
from these schools save in exceptional cases ; but there was 
nothing to prevent a clever boy, whose parents were well- 
disposed, receiving elementary instruction. On the whole, 
I cannot see that on this point modern exploration has 
added much to the information given by Diodorus Siculus, 
i. 81, who says, 'A little reading and writing are taught, 
but not to all; but to those engaged with the industrial 
arts.' At the chief provincial cities (in connection with the 
Temple which was the centre of the civic life) more ad- 
vanced instruction was obtainable, including the writing 
and reading of the hieratic and hieroglyphic character and 
mathematics. These higher schools doubtless supplied the 
professions. 

The Professions. — I have been speaking of the masses 
generally ; but outside and above the masses were the 
professions. And the vital question connected with Egyp- 
tian education is this. "Were the professions open to all ? 
It is now generally held that they were open ; but the fact 
that for long the caste-organisation was believed to be the 
chief characteristic of the Egyptian social system must 
satisfy us that, in all save exceptional cases, children fol- 

1 The inferences drawn from incidental phrases by philo-Egyptians are 
often more than questionable. 



42 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

lowed the occupation of their parents. Still I say the 
way was open for clever boys, and this is the important 
point. 

Tlie higher and professional education had for its chief 
aim the Scribe. A young man who was a scribe would hold 
in Egyptian society the position assigned to an university 
graduate now, or to a literate in Cliiua. A scribe was not 
necessarily also an architect or a physician or a priest, 
although these professional men had of course the accom- 
plishment of scribes. I would refer back to what I have 
already said as to the function of the scribe, and the numer- 
ous lucrative openings, conferring a certain social standing, 
that awaited him. An accomplished scribe would have 
acquired the cursive or demotic script in which the ordinary 
affairs of life were transacted and also the hieratic in which 
the records and traditions of all professions were written, and 
finally, the ideographic or hieroglyphic. He would also be 
an arithmetician, as then understood, and have an adequate 
knowledge of the law as affecting ordinary affairs and busi- 
ness contracts. What else he might study or acquire 
depended on his aims and ambitions. I would point out 
(subject to the correction of Egyptologists) that there must 
have been two classes of scribes: first, there was a large 
class, which, after a certain amount of preliminary educa- 
tion, entered as apprentices the service of those scribes who 
conducted commercial and family affairs. A boy displaying 
some intelligence would be sent to the village scliool at six 
or seven, where some old pedagogue would teach him the 
rudiments of the three E's. If lie did not find his way next 
to a provincial school, he would enter an office that he 
might become a ' learned scribe.' Occupied there in copying 
letters, circulars, and legal documents, his master supervis- 
ing his work and correcting it while the boy rewrites it, he 
gradually acquires a competent acquaintance with writing 
and with business and legal forms of all kinds. If he aims 
at a knowledge of the hieratic script he will have to copy 
from books which contain examples. Having gone through 



THE HAMITIC RACES 43 

this apprenticeship, he applies for a better post.^ The com- 
mercial or notarial scribe is described in the above passage : 
and we also see indicated the liigher class of scribe, who 
studied at the central temple schools and became an expert 
in all kinds of script and a student of law and administra- 
tion. The latter might attain to a very high social position. 
' Neither descent nor family,' says Brugsch, ' hampered the 
rising career of the clever.' The higher scribe schools were 
connected with the royal court and also with the pro- 
vincial courts, and were conducted by a high official. Eaw- 
linson says, ' Egypt provided an open career for talent such 
as scarcely existed elsewhere in the old world, and such as 
few modern communities can be said even yet to furnish. 
It was always possible, under despotic governments, that 
the capricious favour of a sovereign sliould raise to a high, or 
even to the highest position, the lowest person in the king- 
dom. But in Egypt alone, of all ancient states, does a 
system seem to have been established whereby persons of all 
ranks, even the lowest, were invited to compete for the 
royal favour, and, by distinguishing themselves in the public 
schools, to establish a claim for employment in the pub- 
lic service. That employment once obtained, their future 
depended on themselves. Merit secured promotion ; and it 
would seem that the efficient scribe had only to show him- 
self superior to his fellows in order to rise to the highest 
position but one in the empire.' This is too rose-coloured 
a view, but it has a considerable basis of fact. Maspero 
(chapter i.) says, 'There is no sacrifice which the smaller 
folk deem too great if it enables them to give their sons the 
acquirements which may raise them above the common 
people, or at least ensure a less miserable fate.' 

In addition to the profession of scribe, there was the 
profession of architect, as distinct from builder. Here, 
again, I must refer to what I have already said a few pages 
back. The education of the architect in the Temple schools 
of architects doubtless embraced much sacred as well as 

1 Maspero's Ancient Egypt and Assyria, p. 11, 



44 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

historical learning, a knowledge of writing and mathematics, 
and that part of engineering which concerns itself with the 
strength of materials and practical dynamics. The archi- 
tects were often priests, but not necessarily members of that 
order. 

The profession of physician demanded all the usual 
learning of the upper class as well as special knowledge of a 
vast tradition of curative agencies with their related magic 
charms and incantations. I do not suppose it can be 
doubted that this knowledge could be obtained only at 
great Temple centres where the manuscripts could be 
read ; but it is rash to conclude that there were medical 
' schools.' It is much more probable that young men be- 
came physicians by apprenticeship to established prac- 
titioners. Those who desired to be fully accomplished 
had to master the original treatises ascribed to Thoth and 
Imhotpou with their subsequent interpretations and glosses. 

There were professional singers, as well as dancers, 
musicians, and jugglers, for all of whom a certain training 
must have been provided. 

The soldiers lived on the lands assigned to them and were 
called out for regular training in military exercises and gym- 
nastics. Generally speaking, the privileges of the army were 
such that the lower classes were glad to belong to it. Music 
also is said to have been taught in connection with the army, 
but it does not follow that it was taught to all even of those 
who aimed at the position of officer. It is more probable 
that there was a regimental band. The music was of a 
primitive and stereotyped kind and had descended from re- 
mote antiquity. Plato in his 'Laws' (ii. 63, 7) praises the 
Egyptian music because it was of a kind not to soften the 
manners, but grave and serious. It was largely composed of 
sacred chants. At the best period, education of a general 
kind was essential to promotion in the army. There were 
' scribes ' of the army. These educated officers were em- 
ployed in connection with the engineering works of the 
country. 



THE HAMITIC RACES 45 

The priesthood was the highest order in the state, and 
along with the monarch governed Egypt ; the alliance of 
state and church seems to have been in the main harmoni- 
ous. All the learning of the Egyptians was to be found in 
the higher orders of the priesthood, and their education 
embraced an elaborate study of ancient religious documents, 
a complicated ritual and ceremonial, the various kinds of 
script, ethics, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. The 
royal family, and we may presume the children of court 
dignitaries, shared to a certain extent in the education of the 
young priests. The priesthood was not till comparatively 
recent times wholly hereditary, and learned scribes might 
find their way into it ; but it is said that the more profound 
doctrines (and therefore the highest education) were reserved 
for those who were hereditary priests.^ The chief priest col- 
leges were situated at the great cities of Memphis, Thebes, 
and Heliopolis. In these the highest instruction obtainable 
in Egypt was given.^ 

We have mentioned mathematics as entering into the 
higher education of the Egyptians ; but we are not to 
imagine that mathematics was with the Egyptians a science 
in the Greek sense. It was chiefly practical ; but for that 
very reason it must have been a study of a countless number 
of practical rules and much more laborious than a study of 
rational principles which carry practical rules with tliem as 
deductions. 

Women of the upper classes received a certain education 
— probably from private tutors. 

Let it be noted that there was no dehberate effort made 
by state or church to raise the standard of intellectual life 
and culture among the people generally. In so far as in- 
struction went beyond the acquisition of reading and writing, 
it had always a technical or professional purpose — except 

1 Clement of Alexandria partially enumerates the books that had to be 
studied by the Egyptian priesthood in his time. 

2 I avoid using the word ' University ' and generally I have exercised 
my judgment in moderating the tone of some philo-Egyptiaus. 



46 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

perhaps in the highest Temple-schools of the priests. What 
we call ' liberal ' education was not dreamt of even for the 
few. The idea of liberal education did not exist ; on the 
other hand, the course of instruction for the higher priesthood 
comprehended the whole range of knowledge as then imder- 
stood, and as this was pursued for its own sake, an 1 in the 
interests of learning, it may, perhaps, be called liberal 
education. 

With these facts before us, I think we must admit that it 
was not the want of education which restricted the continued 
advance of Egypt, for it had an educational system as wide- 
spread and as effective, relatively to the then state of know- 
ledge, as Europe had up to the earlier decades of this present 
century. Even the masses, spite of the poverty and monoto- 
nous character of their lives, had the means of obtaining 
from some scribe-pedagogue the elements of literature. They 
were, however, chiefly educated by the family and national 
tradition, by their training to technical arts, by the laws, and 
the festivals and ceremonials of their religious system. It 
cannot be said that they were educated by their political con- 
stitution to anything but submission. Personal interest in 
civic and political life, and personal responsibility for the 
welfare of the state, were things alien to the Egyptian as to 
the Oriental mind generally. It was left to Greece and 
Kome, to modern Europe and America, to find, in a free com- 
munity of political interests and responsibilities, a potent 
element in the education of individual citizens better than 
many schools. 

Method and Discipline. — The methods pursued we 
know little of. That dictation was largely resorted to we 
can rightly infer from the school copies in the British and 
French museums, as well as from the necessity of devoting a 
large portion of time to learning the Egyptian character. 
The copies were traced on wooden tablets or bits of stone, 
and the pupil imitated them with a style on wooden tablets 
covered with a layer of red or white stucco. The more 
advanced were promoted to write extracts from good authors 



THE HAMITIC RACES 4.1 

on papynis, both by transcription and from dictation. The 
master corrected the exercises by putting the true forms on 
the margin wherever the pupil had made a mistake. 

By giving passages to the boys to copy, caligraphy and 
orthography were taught, and at the same time the rudiments 
of composition. These passages were sometimes tales, and 
extracts from religious or magical books. More frequently 
the pupil had to copy an ' instruction.' These ' instructions ' 
contained rules for wise conduct and good manners, ascribed 
mostly to Ptah-hetep, the ancient writer of moral precepts. 
The ' instructions ' were often in the form of letters between 
tutor and pupil, ' in which the former is supposed to impart 
wisdom as well as to form an epistolary style.' This accom- 
plishment was of great importance to the scribe, as much of 
the work of public administration seems to have been done 
in writing. 

The difficulties of teachino; must have been great, and, as 
we know, the discipline was severe. ' The hawk is taught to 
fly and the pigeon to nest ; I shall teach you your letters, 
you idle villain ! ' is the utterance of an irate Egyptian 
schoolmaster. There was also a pedagogic saymg, ' A young 
fellow has a back ; he hears when we strike it. ' A scholar 
writing to his master, after having left school, says that ' his 
bones had been broken like those of an ass.' 

Egypt was so long the land of wonder and mystery, that 
there were men who dreamed that its records might yield 
secrets of thought which might throw light on many of the 
problems of life and destiny. As a matter of fact, it seems 
to me, the race was incapable of great exploits in the region 
of philosophy and religion. Practical sagacity and a pro- 
found religious awe were curiously combined in thein ; but 
the analytic labour by which alone truth yields itself to the 
earnest pursuit of man was alien to the Egyptian mind. 
Their religion, moreover, held no idealising principle : their 
morality was preceptive, not reasoned. Even their history 
is only bald registration. Authority and antiquity governed 



48 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

the thought of each successive generation in every depart- 
ment of human inquiry. This gave stability and continuity 
to the kingdom ; but the stability was gained at the cost of 
true intellectual progress. Hence, so far from contemplating 
with astonishment the achievements of Egypt, we are rather 
filled with wonder that 5,000 years of opportunity produced 
so little. It is precisely its surprising failures as well as its 
astonishing successes, which make Egypt so interesting and 
instructive a chapter in the history of the human race. 

Authorities : Herodotus ; Diodorus Siculus ; Ranke's History of the 
World; Eawliiison's Five Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World ; Pro- 
fessor Ebers' appendices to novels ; Strabo ; Maspero's Ancient Egypt and 
Assyria, also his Histoire Ancienne and L'Archeologie Egyptienne ; Brugsch's 
Egyi)t under the Fhatrcohs ; Hansen's Egypt's Place in History; Duncker's 
History of Antiquity ; Dr. Birch's Egypt; Professor Saycc's Ancie7it Empires 
of the East ; Le Page Renouf's Hibbert Lectures on Egyptian Religion; Wil- 
kinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians ; The Story of the 
Nations (' Eg3qit,' by Rawlinson) ; Mariette's Outlines of the History of Egypt, 
by Miss Brodiick ; Professor Tiele's Outlines of the History of Religions : 
Records of the Past ; Erman's Life in Ancient Egypt, translated by Tirard ; 
The Dawn of Civilisation in the East, by Professor Maspero ; The Book of 
the Dead, by Dr. Davis; Professor Menzies' History of Religion. 

Professor Flinders Petrie has issued a History of Egypt, and this will be 
followed, I believe, by a book on its civilisation. These will doubtless be the 
authoritative books when they are completed. Meanwhile I have had to 
form my own conclusions from the evidence before me, the witnesses being 
by no means always in agreement with each other or themselves. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 



THE SEMITIC RACES 

A. — AEABS — BABYLONIANS — ASSYKIANS — PHCENICIANS 

The Semitic races iuliabited that central region of the old 
world which extends from the Arabian and Persian Gulfs 
and the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean and the 
Taurus range. All the nations named at the head of this 
chapter were Semitic ; but, as was the case with every 
other race we encounter in historic times, they were mixed 
with prior populations or fresh immigrants. The greatest 
of these races, from the point of view of general culture 
and art, were the Babylonians, or, as they are sometimes 
called, Chaldeeo-Babylonians : the most warlike and ener- 
getic were the Assyrians : among the Jews or Hebrews, 
again, the Oriental religious spirit found its highest and 
purest expression. The Semitic races generally were like 
the Egyptians of a serious, prosaic, practical, matter of fact 
character. The Hebrews alone exhibit a certain loftiness 
of genius, but this within a narrow field. It is this portion 
of the Semitic race that has influenced the education of the 
world and is consequently of chief interest to us. But 
before speaking of the Hebrews, we must advert for a 
moment to the Arabs, and give some attention to the older 
Semitic communities which grew up in the Mesopotamian 
plains and highlands. 

(1) THE AKABS 

Owing to their geographical position the Arabs preserved 
the Semitic character and blood in its purest form, and their 
religious beliefs may probably be regarded as the primitive 
Semitic religion. This religion was fetichistic, and varied 



52 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

among different tribes. All worshipped the sun and moon 
and certain constellations, but the god of each of the numer- 
ous clans was the chief object of devotion. He was the cap- 
tain and master of the clan. Idolatry was of late introduction. 
Sacred stones and mountains were objects of adoration, es- 
pecially the Black Stone of the Kaaba which was at the 
national centre, Mecca. They were essentially a nomadic race, 
but there were settled kingdoms. The most recent explora- 
tions speak of two kingdoms which probably in succession to 
each other extended their power, or at least suzerainty over 
the most of Arabia, viz. Saba (Sheba) and Ma'm. The 
kingdom of Saba was flourishing before the time of Solomon 
and there are inscriptions ascribed to that period showing 
that writing was known. But as we know nothing about the 
constitution of these kingdoms, no materials exist for a his- 
tory of education. Among the Arabs generally, however, 
there existed from a very remote period a considerable' body 
of poetry of a lyric kind, chiefly warlike and elegiac. These 
were handed down by rhapsodists who recited them at 
tribal meetings. Tradition gives the name of Lokm^n, a 
contemporary of King David, as that of a celebrated poet, 
and ' round his name,' says Duncker, ' is gathered a number 
of proverbs, gnomes, and fables.' The oral poetic literature 
was, however, floating and unorganised. Even of the Arabs 
in the century preceding the rise of Mahomet, Ibn KhallikS,n 
(who wrote his biographical dictionary in the thirteenth 
century) says, ' the people consisted of Arabs wholly igno- 
rant of the mode by which learning is taught, of the art of 
composing works and of the means by which knowledge is 
enregistered.' (Introd. to vol. ii.) While this was so, we 
must still allow a certain educative effect to the floating 
unwritten literature. In speaking of Oriental nations, we 
must always remember that their memories were facile and 
retentive to an extent which to the modern European is 
almost incredible. When Mahomet arose, for example, the 
Koran was learnt by heart and recited, and those who had 
acquired this power were held in great respect as ' Eeaders.' 



THE SEMITIC RACES 53 

There can be no doubt that writing (on pahn-leaves, leather, 
and stone) was known long before the Christian era. The 
writing introduced into Mecca a.d. 560 was a reformed 
script.^ 

But very few could write, and even these few seemed to 
make little use of it. 

(2) THE BABYLONIANS 

The Babylonians were the primary centre of the Mesopo- 
tamian culture and religion, they themselves, however, as we 
shall see, resting on a still earlier civilisation. The true 
greatness of Babylon as a city began about the eighteenth 
century B. C. 

It was from the southern Chaldteo-Babylonian district 
that the Assyrians of Nineveh in the north migrated. It 
was only in the thirteenth century b. c. (about the time of 
the death of Moses) that the Assyrians began to extend 
their power over other races. In 1100 B.C. they were the 
acknowledged masters north, south, and east of Nineveh. 
The empire rapidly grew in the ninth century b. c, extend- 
ing even to the Mediterranean. Nineveh was always more 
warlike than the great centre of culture, Babylon ; ^ and 
after the middle of the thirteenth century b. c, the latter was 
virtually in subjection to the Assyrians. In the middle of 
the seventh century b. c, the loosely -join ted Assyrian empire 
began suddenly to collapse, after it had extended itself to 
Media in the East and Egypt and Arabia on the South. It 
was an empire of violence ; but it concentrated in itself and 
raised to a historical world-importance, as Eanke says, the 
martial vigour of the Semitic race. Nor were the Assyrians 
only warriors : the ruins of Nineveh to this day testify to its 

1 Sir W. Muir's Life of Mahomet, p. 8. Caussin de Perceval does not deny 
this, as Sir W. Muir seems to tliink. 

2 The revival of letters and of the sciences and arts under the Moham- 
medan conquerors in the eighth and subsequent centuries A. d. belongs to the 
mediaeval period. The eminent men during this period were probably not 
genuine Arabs at all. 



54 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

greatness and challenge the public works of Babylon and 
Susa. It fell before the Medes (towards the end of the 
seventh century) assisted by the Babylonians, who thus 
avenged their own prior subjection. It had enjoyed an im- 
perial existence of 250 years, and was the first conquering 
power founding an empire which we meet with in the liistory 
of the world. 

Babylon was now the head of all the Western portion of 
the former Assyrian empire, but only for a brief period. It 
fell before the Medo-Persians (also including Elamites) in 
538 B.C. 

But though the Assyrian and Babylonian empires were 
shortlived, Nmeveh, and above aU Babylon, had been for a 
very long period the centres of Mesopotamian civilisation. 
They had attained to political constitutions, religious sys- 
tems, and laws, and to the highest degree of material wealth. 
We may date the importance of Nineveh as a civilised centre 
and a rising military power from 1400 B. c. ; but Babylon 
and the civilisation of the Babylonian and ChaldaBan country 
(the southern portion of Mesopotamia) have a much more 
ancient record.^ 

The Babylonian culture, in all its forms, rested on that of 
the early occupants of the alluvial plains between the two 
rivers — known as Accadians or Sumir-Accadians.^ 

The Accadians had, it is commonly held, come from the 
plains south of the Caspian Sea and entered the southern 
Mesopotamian valley probably through Elam east of the 
Tigris. After they had developed a certain civilisation here, 
the wandering Semites took possession and were amalgamated 
with the resident population — entering probably about 
2200 B. c. Tiele (' Die Assyriologie, eine Eede ') says that 

1 As a help in taking a chronological and comparative view, it is of im- 
portance to note that Solomon, who raised the power of the Israelites to its 
highest point, died in 975 B. c, and that the date of the foundation of Rome 
was 753 B. c. 

2 The most recent information points to inhabitants of a Cushite type 
prior to the Accadians. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 55 

the Semitic civilisation iu the Mesopotamian plains cannot 
be put further back than 2000 B. c, but we know that the 
Accadian civilisation, including religion and science, was 
developed long before that date. It would not now, indeed, 
be considered an exaggeration to date the heginnings of 
Sumir-Accadian civilisation in the lower Mesopotamian 
basin from nearly 4000 b. c.^ 

The Accadian religion was animistic and fetichistic. 
There was an organised priesthood and temples. They 
believed in multitudinous demons, good and evil, between 
whom there was continual warfare. But this contest had 
no ethical significance. Their priesthood, however (at least 
after a certain date), believed in a supreme God among 
the gods. The practice of magic and incantations, worked 
out into the most elaborate detail, flourished. Evil spirits 
had to be conciliated, and these were everywhere. But this 
relation to unseen powers had among the Accadians no 
moral meanmg. As regards a future life, it was held that 
the spirits of the dead lived an unhappy and dreary exist- 
ence for ever in a gloomy Hades — a world of shadows — 
the underworld ; subsequently, it was taught that the gods 
received into pleasant regions all who served them well 
during life. The ethical importance of this advance is 
manifest. 

A Semitic race, which seems to have entered the northern 
portions of the Mesopotamian basin, amalgamated with 
this primitive Accadian people, and the combined people 
are thereafter known to history as Babylonians or Chal- 
dseans. Gradually the religious conceptions to which we 
have referred above, reached a still higher development 
under the influence, one would be disposed to say, of the 
specifically Semitic spirit. The nature-beings became gods, 
truly governing the natural order ; and the study of astron- 

1 I follow the leading authorities. Maspero is much less confident than 
many other writers, and would consider the above statement much too definite, 
and in fact the most recent explorations show that the history prior to 2200 
B. c. has to he reconstructed. 



56 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

omy and mathematics, by exalting men's minds, gave to 
the supreme deities a more relined and elevated character. 
Above all the numerous gods, one was now placed whose 
commands were absolute — the Lord of Lords. Without 
throwing off the magic and augury and elaborate system of 
incantations which they had adopted, they {i. e. the more ad- 
vanced priesthood) exhibited in their worship ' a vivid sense 
of sin, a deep feehng of man's dependence, even of his noth- 
ingness before God, in prayers and hymns hardly less fervent 
than those of the pious souls of Israel ' (Tiele). As evidence 
of this we may here cite an extract from one of the peniten- 
tial psalms, merely premising that at the time it was written 
there had grown up a belief that each individual soul had his 
god — a belief which would easily be universalised and pass 
into that of a one God who was truly the god of all human 
spirits alike. The sense of a personal relation between God 
and the human soul, so characteristic of the Semitic race, here 
makes its appearance (but in a particular, not a universal 
form), and suggests that the remains we now have of this 
purer religion did not date prior to the amalgamation of 
Semitic immigrants, or, indeed, prior to 2000 years B.C. 

From a Penitential Psalm. 

The heart of my Lord was wrath, to his place may he return ; 
From the man who sinned unknowingly, to his place may my 
God return ! 

And so on, frequently repeated in slightly altered forms; 
then : 

The transgression that I committed, my God knew it. 

Oh, my God, that knowest that I knew not, my transgressions 
are great, my sins are many. 

God, who knew though I knew not, hath passed me. 

T lay on the ground, and no one seized me by the hand. 
I wept and my palms none took. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 57 

And so forth. This is evidently part of a liturgy, as appears 
from rubrical directions.^ 

Tlie following Address to the Sun illustrates the stage of 
poetical culture which the higher type of Chaldaeo-Baby Ionian 
mind had reached : 

' Sun ! thou hast stepped forth from the background of 
heaven, thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant 
heaven — yea, the gate of heaven. Sun ! above the land 
thou hast raised thy head ! Sun ! thou hast covered the 
immeasurable space of heaven and countries ! ' 

There are also many passages of poetic vigour in the Epic 
of Izdhubar. 

The Chaldaian priesthood, which was partly hereditary, 
partly selected, conserved and developed the religious system 
which we may call Accadian-Semitic, and maintained the 
ceremonies of the temples. They handed down the tra- 
ditions of the race and had an oral as well as a written 
literature, which embodied their philosophy of life and 
poetic conceptions. 

Education. — All the arts of life that minister to com- 
fort and luxury attained great perfection : the Babylonian 
architecture was conceived and executed with a certain 
vastness of imagination, and their canals and embankments 
showed great engineering skill. All this implies a highly 
developed technical instruction. Of education, however, in 
any literary sense, or even of the ethical education of the 
family, there can have been little or none. This must always 
chiefly depend on the religious and ethical conceptions of a 
nation as a whole, and not of a restricted order in a nation. 
At the same time the people as a whole can, especially under 
a despotic political system, be sustained at a certain level by 
the convictions of the few. But, where the religion in its 
popular form was a crude polyd?emonism accompanied by 
magic and incantation and the worship of arbitrary spirits 
good and evil, the people could receive no education from a 
spiritual ideal of life. Marriage was set about with great 
^ From Records of the Past. 



58 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

formality and regarded as a social act of great importance ; 
but the husband was not restricted to one wife. Although 
the wife in the middle and lower orders had great liberty of 
action allowed her, her life was not much better than that of 
a slave. It was impossible, accordingly, that domestic rela- 
tions could furnish any moral basis for the family. Nor 
could citizens who had no political status receive education 
from the working of political institutions. Doubtless, had 
the later religious conceptions, to which I have referred 
above, been the possession of the people and not merely 
of a class, their educative influence might have moulded the 
Mesopotamian civilisation to a much higher form than it 
ever attained ; but there is no evidence that this was so. 

Education of the upper classes. — The education of 
the fcAV, on the other hand, was by no means despicable. As 
time advanced, the higher minds held monotheistic views, 
the numerous gods being regarded as merely aspects of the 
supreme divine Being. In the course of time, the gods were 
resolved, under the influence of a speculative philosophy, into 
elements and abstractions ; and a cosmogony arose like that 
given in the first chapter of Genesis, with this important dif- 
ference, however, that the universe was regarded as a series, 
of emanations from the Supreme Being. This speculative 
view passed even into Ionic Greece and neo-Platonism. 
Charms, amulets, sorcery, divination, incantations, all con- 
tinued, however, to flourish side by side with these higher 
ideas, and the conception of man's life as haunted by devilish 
spirits (a survival apparently of the older Accadian religion), 
who had to be driven off or appeased, had not been super- 
seded even among the priesthood. 

The literature which constituted the material of education 
for the higher orders was extensive. Every great town had 
its library on brick tablets, which were thrown open to the 
public (Sayce). A great astronomical work, compiled for 
Sargon's library at Agade, is said to be of the early date of 
3800 B. c. ' There were historical and mythological writings, 
religious compositions, legal, geographical, astronomical, and 



THE SEMITIC RACES 59 

astrological treatises ; magical formulae and omen tablets ; 
poems, fables, and proverbs ; grammatical and lexical dis- 
quisitions, beside archives ' (Sayce, p. 170). There were 
state observatories in the chief towns and astronomers-royal 
were appointed who had ' to send fortnightly reports to the 
king.' The knowledge of arithmetic, mathematics, and me- 
chanics also had made considerable progress, but only on 
the practical, not the scientific, side. We have to add 
the great Epic of Izdhubar, which belonged to the domain of 
literature.^ 

The interest of the Chaldseans in astronomy was not 
strictly scientific. They made numerous observations and 
had constructed many astronomical tables, but this not so 
much with a view to a knowledge of the heavens as to astro- 
logy. The position of the heavenly bodies indicated earthly 
destinies, and to foretell these was the function of the Chal- 
dsean priest. Diodorus tells us (ii. 29) that the sons of the 
priestly class were carefully instructed from boyhood up, 
and this, indeed, was necessary to their acquisition of the 
detailed learning required of them. Astronomy and as- 
trology alone demanded persevering study. Medicine was 
not a subject of serious pursuit. As diseases were caused by 
evil spirits, the medical art in Chaldsea confined itself to 

^ It was Shargena or Sargon I. who (coming from the north or north-east 
had conquered the Babylonian territories) flourished somewhere about 2200 
B. c, to whom the institution or revival of libraries was due. A royal library 
was collected by him in the town of Ourouk, hence sometimes called the Town 
of Books, and the library contained the traditionary lore of the Chaldseo- 
Babyloniau priesthood, among which were histories, theology, elaborate trea- 
tises on divination and magic, catalogues of beasts and minerals, medicine 
(incantations chiefly, accompanied by a materia medica), astronomy, astrology, 
and mathematics. Nor was this the only library ; there were several in the 
Babylonian territory. Sargon was himself a modern, and the literature he 
collected was the accumulation of probably 2000 j'ears. There was another 
Shargena I., 3800 B. c, who seems to be legendary (?). About B. c. 628 Assur. 
bani-pal, king of Assyria, had bilingual copies of the Babylonian library made 
and placed them in Nineveh, and a considerable portion are now in the Brit- 
ish Museum. The authorities for the above quotations are numerous, but see 
Maspero's Histoire Ancienne, pp. 157-9. But doubtless all that has been said 
of the first Shargena or Sargon requires reconsideration. 



60 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

the invention of magical formulae which should exorcise 
the demons. 

The liigher education was not confined to the priestly 
class (which, however, was itself a large and powerful body), 
but extended to the body of scribes. These men were not 
held in such high social estimation as in Egypt. The work- 
inCT of the local and central administration was, however, 
largely in their hands. ' We continually meet with them in 
all grades of society, in the palace, in the temples, in the 
storehouses, in private dwellings. In fine, the scribe was 
ubiquitous at court, in the town, in the country, in the aimy, 
managing affairs both small and great, and seeing that tiiey 
were carried on efficiently. His education differed but little 
from that given to the Egyptian scribe ; he learned the rou- 
tine of administrative and judicial affairs, the formularies of 
correspondence either with nobles or with ordinary people, 
the art of writing, of calculating quickly and making out 
bills correctly.'^ They wrote on slabs of fine plastic clay 
with a stylus and then sent it to the potter to be baked or 
put it into an oven of their own. Besides these clay tablets, 
they sometimes used hollow cyhnders on which they wrote 
public events of importance. Forms of judicial decisions 
and business contracts &c. are found written on these. The 
writing was originally ideographic as in Egypt. It is to the 
indestructible character of these baked tablets and cylinders 
that we owe what knowledge we have of those remote times. 

Nor was the education confined even to priests and scribes. 
Many of the upper classes shared in it to a certain extent, 
while the public libraries afforded the means of study to all 
who had ambition to learn. That a portion of the upper 
classes received instruction there can be no doubt. Among 
Oriental races generally we find that young men, not of the 
priestly order, were brought up in the royal court for the 
service of the country ; and there is no reason to doubt that 
Nebuchadnezzar's instructions as regards the Jewish children 
were only the continuation of an ancient Babylonian prac- 
1 Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, p. 726. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 61 

tice. In the first chapter of Daniel the prophet, it is 
narrated : 

* And the king spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of his 
eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of 
Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the princes ; children in 
whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all 
wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, 
and such as had ability in them, to stand in the king's palace, 
and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of 
the Chaldeans. And the king appointed them a daily pro- 
vision of the king's meat, and of the wine which he drank : 
so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they 
might stand before the king. Now among these were, of the 
children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.' 

It is difficult, indeed, to see how the government of any 
civilised country could have been carried on without a lay 
royal school as well as priestly and scribe schools. The 
palace school of Charlemagne in the eighth century was thus 
a much more ancient institution than he himself imagined. 
"We may also conclude generally that, in a country which 
erected monuments with inscriptions for all to read, not a 
few of the population could read and write, outside the 
priesthood, the scribes, and the royal court. 

Of the schools and teachers we know nothing. Tablets 
have been found in Babylon on which school-exercises are 
written. Where learning and teaching existed there must, 
of course, have been teachers, and we may conclude that 
pedagogues (priests and scribes) were numerous, who pro- 
bably gave individual, not class, instruction. Priest and 
scribe would, of course, be careful to instruct their own chil- 
dren who were, after the Oriental fashion, to succeed them in 
their public functions. 

(3) THE ASSYRIANS 

The Chaldteo-Babylonian priesthood liad attained to the idea 
of one supreme God. The Assyrians accepted the religion 
of the race, but emphasised the personal character of the 



62 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

supreme God under the name of Asshur. As was natural 
in a warlike people, they recognised the military leadership 
and command of the God — the ' God of battles,' who was 
also king and father. The people as a whole were victims 
of a debased superstition ; rehgious, however, in the sense in 
which they understood religion. 

But for our purposes here there is nothing to be said 
which has not already been said of the Babylonians, except 
that, as befitted men living in a more elevated country, the 
Assyrians exhibited many of the virtues of a vigorous and 
conquering people. Hunting was a favourite amusement; 
the chase of the lion, buffalo, gazelle, horse, and wild ass. 
The Babylonian love of magnificence in architecture, sculp- 
ture, and decoration was even exceeded in Nineveh, and the 
Assyrians were famous for the art with which they adorned 
their palaces and temples. Their technical and military 
education must have been highly developed ; but education 
of the higher kind was restricted to the priesthood, the royal 
court, and to the scribes. It was Chaldseo-Babylonian in its 
character. 

The priesthood seems to have inherited those conceptions 
regarding the personal relation of the soul of man to a, or 
the, divine Being which we have found among the Baby- 
lonians. I may cite, in illustration and evidence of this, the 
hymn quoted in ' Eecords of the Past ' by Mr. Talbot. 

Oh, my Lord, my sins are many, my trespasses are great, 

And the wrath of the gods has plagued me with disease 

And with sickness and sorrow. 

I fainted, but no one stretched forth his hand ; 

I groaned, but no one drew nigh. 

I cried aloud, but no one heard. 

Lord, do not abandon thy servant. 

In the waters of tlie great storm seize his hand, 

The sins which he has committed turn thou to righteousness. 

The Assyrians, however, paid a tribute to learning in 
having, like the Egyptians, a 'god of letters.' It was to 



THE SEMITIC RACES 63 

an Assyrian monarch also (Assur-bani-pal) (p. 59, footnote) 
that we owe the preservation of a great portion of Babylonian 
literature. He had copies of the Babylonian brick tablets 
made, both the Accadian text and a parallel Assyrian trans- 
lation being given. These were placed in the great library at 
Nineveh. In that library also were preserved numerous gov- 
ernment despatches, letters, astronomical and astrological 
treatises, and tables giving an account of the law, of legal 
decisions, contracts of sale, records of tributes and taxes, &c. 
So far as national religion, literature, and the arts were 
concerned, there is no apparent reason why education should 
not have been as accessible and widely diffused in Babylonia 
and Assyria as in Egypt. But when we read of the constant 
wars, we can see how it was that certain forms of civilisation 
which could grow up and flourish in an isolated land like the 
Nile valley, did not take root in a country so disturbed as the 
Mesopotamian basin. 

(4) THE PHCENICIANS 

The narrow coast-line between Lebanon and the Mediter- 
ranean (little more than 120 miles long and 15 broad), was 
occupied by Semites famous in history for their commercial 
enterprise. Tyre and Sidon were the two chief cities. 

The Phoenician government was a monarchy tempered by 
an oligarchy of wealth, the king being apparently only first 
among a body of ruling merchant princes. When the mon- 
archy disappeared, the chief magistrate was called 'judge,' 
and he held office for shorter or longer periods. 

With the Phoenicians we find material aims and luxurious 
living similar to those which marked the Assyrians and 
Babylonians, but in a grosser form. The former owed their 
wealth to trade, the latter found the basis of their material 
civilisation in the fertile alluvial tracts of the Euphrates and 
Tigris and in the well irrigated northern parts of the Meso- 
potamian basin. Phoenicia was the gate of communication 
between Europe and the Orient. With Phoenicia is associated 
the invention of symbols for numbers and the elements of 



64 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

sound in words; but these seem originally to have been 
drawn from Egypt where there was a large Phoenician set- 
tlement. The necessities as well as the opportunities of com- 
merce would naturally lead to the adoption and development 
of what was derived from Egypt, with a view to facilitate 
communication with foreign nations. Their buildings, their 
harbours and ships, and the works of art which they pro- 
duced, all point to a high efficiency in their technical instruc- 
tion. They were manufacturers, merchants, and colonisers. 
But commerce and money-making seem to have engrossed 
their minds, and there is no evidence of any moral idea in 
their civilisation.^ 

And yet Phoenicia, as intermediary between East and 
West, played an important part in the history of civilisation ; 
but only as intermediaries. Greek art owed its early Assyrian 
character to it, and to it also the Greeks were indebted for 
the alphabet and for many Oriental elements in their religion 
and mythology. But it would have been better without 
them. On the Israelites their influence was even more 
marked. The Temple at Jerusalem was built by Phoenician 
artists and workmen. They were also the founders of Car- 
thage, which contested the sovereignty of the Mediterranean 
with the rising power of Eome. Both as artists and crafts- 
men they originally borrowed from others ; but they improved 
on their Egyptian and Assyrian masters. 

Their chief gods were the sun and moon. But they de- 
graded what they received of the spiritual element from the 
Mesopotamian priesthood, more than they improved on the 
arts which they received from them and the Egyptians. 
They were an impure and cruel people. They sought to 
win the favour of Heaven by lascivious practices on festal 
occasions. Destitute of literature, if we except historical 
archives, and destitute also of an initiating or progressive 
spirit in art, they were lost in a sensual materialism. 

If it be true, as I think it is, that genuine progress in civ- 

1 For a brilliant description of the wealth and occupations of the Phoeni- 
cians, see Ezekiel xxvii. and xxviii. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 65 

ilisation is determined by the ethical and religious conceptions 
of a nation, we can understand that Phcenicia has little to 
teach us save by way of warning. Enterprising on the sea 
and hio-hly intelligent they certainly were. But for all else 
they cannot arrest the attention of the historian. 

B. — THE HEBREWS OE JEWS 

Of the Semitic races by far the most famous was the Hebrew 
which emigrated from the west side of the Euphrates to 
Canaan or Palestine about 2000 B.C. Their centre of origin 
was Ur of the Chaldees, where the Abrahamic religion is 
understood to have arisen. Whether dissatisfaction with the 
mixed character of the Chaldseo-Babylonian religion insti- 
gated the migration or not it is impossible to say.^ 

The history of this remarkable people, however, properly 
dates from the emigration from Egypt under Moses about 
1490 B. C.2 After a period of wandering and many petty 
wars, in which they exhibited no small violence and cruelty, 
the land acquired on the east and west side of Jordan was 
divided among the twelve tribes. The tribe of Levi, how- 
ever, which represented the sacerdotal class, was scattered 
throughout the country — the object of this being, it may 
be presumed, the maintenance of religious life and historical 
tradition among the people. For, Jewish history begins and 
ends with a great historical deliverance and an exalted 
religious idea. 

' It was the aim of Moses,' says Eanke, ' that the idea by 
the power of which he had led them out of Egypt should 
continue to form the central point of their spiritual and 
political life. Moses is the most exalted figure in all primi- 
tive history. The thought of God as an intellectual Being 
independent of all material existence was seized by him 
and, so to speak, incorporated in the nation which he led. 
Not that the nation and the idea were simply co-extensive ; 
the idea of the most High God as He revealed Himself on 

1 The name Jew is strictly applicable only to the Hebrews of Judaea. 

2 The date assigned varies from the above to 1320. 

5 



66 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Horeb is one for all times and all nations : — an idea of a 
pure and infinite Being, which admits of no limitation, but 
which nevertheless inspii-es every decree of the legislator, 
every undertaking of the captain of the host.' 

The religion of the Hebrews was Abrahamic : and by 
this I mean that it was an outgrowth of certain Chaldsean 
religious conceptions brought from Ur by the nomadic tribe 
of which Terah, the father of Abraham, was the chief. But 
when we have granted this, we must recognise that a fresh de- 
parture was made under Moses. It matters not to us what the 
date of the various books of the Pentateuch may have been : 
there can be no reasonable doubt, it seems to me, that the 
Mosaic tradition was preserved by a priesthood, although 
this priesthood was not fully organised till the time of David. 
The tradition took its departure from the idea of God and 
the Law as delivered by the new founder of the nation ; 
and amid all the narrowness and the aberrations of tribes 
and parties, the tradition survived, and grew by logical de- 
velopment till it reached its full expression in the prophets 
— from Amos in the eighth century B.C. till after the Exile. 
Moses was a remarkable man, and of a transcendent person- 
ality ; for, cognisant as he was of the religion of Egypt, he 
was yet able in his spiritual strength to set it aside, and to 
bring a nation to the foot of Sinai. Neither Osiris, nor Isis, 
nor Ptah, nor Ammon, was allowed to influence, much less 
to dominate, his religious thought. God was One — the sole 
creator of heaven and earth — ultimate Being. The powers 
of nature, and animals and men, were His work, and could 
not be deified. He was a Spirit, and had to be worshipped 
as a spirit, and in spirit. But above all, He was a God 
supremely ethical, and demanded of men the service of 
obedience to the moral law. It is impossible to exaggerate 
the importance of this thought in the history of mankind. 
It furnished a fresh point of departure for the whole human 
race. Moses was the greatest of schoolmasters. Strange to 
say, though familiar in Egypt with the idea of life after 
death, he does not embody this idea in his teaching. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 67 

Where the ark of God was, there too was the centre of 
Jewish faith and ritual. It was a golden-plated chest which 
was said to contain (and why should it not contain ?) the 
Mosaic tables of stone ; but there were necessarily, especially 
in pre-Davidic times, many local altars and open-air sanctu- 
aries — ' worship of the high places and under green trees ' 
(by which is meant worship of stones or monoliths placed on 
eminences and symbolic of Baal and frequently also the trunk 
of a tree as representing the female deity) — where vows were 
made and sacrifices offered ; and these for the most part, of 
an idolatrous kind. Eound the central sanctuary, however, 
whether at Shiloh or afterwards at Jerusalem, the best tradi- 
tion gathered, and there seems to be no sufficient reason to 
doubt that it was orally handed down by the priesthood 
before writing was common. The ark along with the Taber- 
nacle (subsequently represented by the Holy of Holies in the 
Temple at Jerusalem) was the centre of national unity, as 
well as of the national faith, in a much more real sense than 
Delphi was the centre of Hellenic unity. That writing was 
used much earlier than the ' higher criticism ' admits is so 
highly probable as to be almost certain. Why should we 
imagine that the art of writing universal in Egypt and Baby- 
lon was forgotten, especially when the Jews were in constant 
intercourse with surrounding nations who all possessed the 
art? 

For two or three centuries, the Hebrews held their own as 
what might be called a loosely federated tribal republic (with 
industries which were chiefly pastoral) under the occasional 
guidance of local chiefs or judges, some of whom received 
national, and not merely tribal, recognition, and the last and 
greatest of whom was the prophet Samuel. It became neces- 
sary to organise themselves as a monarchy in order to defend 
their country against their enemies. Saul, the Benjamite, 
was chosen 1095 B.C. and David succeeded him in 1055 B.C. 
The incessant attacks of the Philistines were doing much, 
while making a monarchy essential, to weld the Jewish 
tribes into the unity of a nation, and the national idea natu- 



68 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

rally led David to organise the Priesthood. Under the long 
reifi[n of David's ina-rnificeut successor Solomon, the Hebrews 
reached their highest eminence as a secular polity, and ex- 
tended their dominions to the Euphrates and the Ked Sea. 
After his death differences, partly political, partly religious, 
brought about a civil war, led on the one side by Eehoboam, 
Solomon's son, and on the other by Jeroboam. The former 
party represented the interests of Judah and Benjamin in the 
south, while the latter represented Ephraim in the north. 
Many of the original tribes, it is necessary to note, had by 
this time become amalgamated with the more powerful ones, 
and were largely mixed with Canaanitish elements. The 
issue of this strife was two kingdoms — the southern, that of 
Judah (including Benjamin) with its capital Jerusalem, and 
the northern, Israel, with its capital Samaria. 

This internal dissension led ultimately to the overthrow of 
both kingdoms. First of all, the Israelites of the north, at- 
tacked by the Assyrians, were subdued and carried ofi' and 
planted in Media, Assyrian colonists taking their place (720 
B.C.). The Israelites of the northern kingdom, thus crushed 
by the Assyrian king, are spoken of as the ' lost ten tribes.' 
Those who remained (the larger number of the commonalty), 
became mixed with immigrants, and in their religious life 
seem to have differed little, for a time at least, from that of 
other Semitic races round about, being especially influenced 
by Canaanite conceptions. They ultimately organised a 
Mosaic religion of their own based on the Law, but they 
seem to have ignored the prophets. 

The centre of Hebrew nationality was now Judah, 
Jerusalem, and the Temple — the symbolic centre of the 
Hebrew faith ; there the true Mosaic tradition was pre- 
served. But Judah did not for long escape the misfor- 
tunes of her northern brethren. The Babylonian king, 
Nebuchadnezzar, took Jerusalem, burned the Temple, and 
carried off the leading inhabitants to Babylon (588 B.C.). 
Cyrus gave the Jews permission to return (538), but only 
the lower section of the people and the priests and scribes 



THE SEMITIC RACES 69 

took advantage of the permission. The Temple was rebuilt 
516 B.C. and the priesthood began to reconstitute the doc- 
trine and practice of the law. But it was not till the second 
migration from Babylon under Ezra (458 B.C.), who was soon 
followed by Nehemiah, that the Mosaic tradition became 
fully formulated and an elaborate ritual constituted. 

The monarchy now gave way to the rule of the hereditary 
priesthood. The real government of the Jews, accordingly, 
was now in the hands of a senate of priests, scribes, and 
elders called the Great Synagogue,^ which as time went on 
took more and more definite shape, and developed into the 
famous Sanhedrin. The form of government was a natural 
development of the governing idea of the Hebrew race, which 
was a strictly religious idea. 

It is a question whether any portion of the Pentateuchal 
books was committed to writing before the time of Josiah 
(640 B.C.), and certain critics maintain that the Law as a 
whole was written under the direction of Ezra and Nehe- 
miah. I think we may safely conclude that the Law could 
not have been invented and suddenly sprung upon the 
people. Its root ideas had been orally handed down from 
Moses, and doubtless grew and expanded, partly as oral 
tradition, partly as written documents, as generations suc- 
ceeded each other until the time of the Exile. 

The written as well as the oral law was now enforced, 
and the beginning laid of an organised system of legal 
formalism and of ecclesiastical ceremonial which in the 
course of time became oppressive. All religious ideas 
when reduced to a system by an official body have a ten- 
dency to become formal and external. The formulation, 
however, preserves the substance of the living doctrine ; and 
so we find in the case of the Jews. The legal and cere- 
monial system was not only conservative of past history 
and religious tradition, but it secured the unity of the Jewish 
race, and made that unity independent of a political nation- 
ality. The Jews long before the Christian era were an 

^ Probably not formally organised under this name. 



70 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

emigrating people and were dispersed over the cities of the 
East and of the Mediterranean.^ The body of doctrine 
and ritual sustained them in their existence amons the 
nations as a ' peculiar people.' 

Mosaism and the Priesthood, Prophets, and Scribes, 
as educational forces. — Whatever other gods might have 
been worshipped by the Hebrews at local altars ('high 
places and under green trees ' ) during the nomadic, and 
even during the more settled agricultural period after Samuel 
(and these gods were various, and increased in number under 
the influence of neighbouring and immigrant popvilations), 
they yet, as a nation, preserved a distinctive religious belief 
and character which marked them off from other branches 
of the Semites. From the time of Moses they had unques- 
tionably a theology and a law. Deep in the traditional hfe of 
the people, though often doubtless confined in its outward 
manifestations to the conservative priestly order or the reform- 
ing prophets, was the idea of Jahveh — Sole God. Not merely 
a God ahovc other gods within the nation (for within the 
nation he was alone God and a ' jealous ' God), but above all 
gods recognised among the superstitious and idolatrous 
cotemporary peoples. This God was One and Sole — Being 
miiversal and yet personal — ' I am that I am ' ; and he was 
a God moreover of ethical attributes, comprehending in Him- 
self the idea of moral law and proclaiming the duty of the 
believer to the law. The Infinite God was thus in personal 
relation to man as a moral finite being ; — and, accordingly, 
we may say with truth that it was among the Jews that God 
first began to dwell with man. To Moses and the develop- 
ment of his teaching the world owes, not perhaps the idea 
of God as One and Sole Supreme Spirit (for the Zoroastrians 
independently attained to this), but the more practical con- 
ception of God as a self-subsistent moral personality in 

1 Alexander the Great and one of his generals who became king of Egypt 
cari'ied off many to peojile Alexandria Oyrene ; and these spread through 
Egypt and along the northern coast of Africa. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 71 

direct relation with the finite spirit of the rational creature. 
For this and the sublime expression of exalted spirituaUty 
which by natural development arose out of it, the world 
owes a permanent debt to the Hebrews. They had Httle 
art and no science. The energy of the race was concentrated 
on a great central thought and its logical issues ; and with 
this remarkable result, that the pure literature contained in 
the Old Testament is as true an expression of the relation 
of the devout soul to God to-day as it was 2500 years ago: 
and, as such, it can never be superseded. The Mosaic idea 
was a protest against idolatry and nature-worship on the 
one hand, and Pantheism on the other. To trace the grad- 
ual growth of the primary Mosaic conception is not our 
business. Enough, from the point of view of the education 
of the human race and specially of the Jews themselves, that 
at the date of the canon of Ezra we not only have the final 
formulation of the priestly tradition of the Law, but, above 
all, the completed spiritual interpretation of the prophets. 

The priesthood in the earher times discharged the pubUc 
function of sacrificing (I say ' public ' because private offer- 
ings and sacrifices were common among the Israelites, 
as among all nations, and did not require the official pres- 
ence of a priest). It is not to be alleged against them, as 
in any way detracting from the sacredness of their office, 
as intermediaries for the ascertainment of the will of 
Jahveh, that they shared the belief in magic and incanta- 
tions common to all races of mankind, and that, by lending 
themselves to the interpretation of dreams and the prediction 
of events, they often prostituted their true function. Perhaps 
the most important characteristic of the priesthood as educator 
of the nation, was its relation to civil affairs. The priests gave 
advice to the people, they issued judicial decisions on questions 
brought before them, and gave shelter against oppression. 
The unwritten Law (Torah) was gradually built up by them. 
I am here summarising their functions, while of course 
recognising to the full its irregular action and gradual devel- 
opment. ' They shall teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel 



72 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

thy Law' (Deut. xxxiii. 10) may have been written down, 
for all I know, on parchment for the first time in the days 
of Josiah or Ezra, but it was an ex post facto writing. Mr. 
Montefiore quotes from Professor Stade as follows : ' No one 
in old Israel was more capable of protecting the unfortunate 
from oppression, of punishing the injustice of the mighty, 
and tlius of strengthening tlie moral conscience, softening 
public manners, and educating society, than the priests. . . . 
Their importance for the development of religion, justice, 
and public morality cannot be too highly estimated.' That 
their full organisation did not take place till the time of 
David does not affect the truth of this. Thus the close connec- 
tion between religion, morality, and civil polity gave a posi- 
tion of power to the priesthood much greater than that found 
among other nations. At the same time it saved the priest- 
hood from exclusive and esoteric beliefs, and from the proud 
isolation of a class. Civil lav/ and social practices were mere 
deductions from the Divine law. The banal distinction be- 
tween sacred and secular, from which modern Europe suffers, 
did not exist. The Levites were ministers to the Aaronic 
priests, but could not themselves perform the highest functions. 
In the Mosaic idea of God we have the Semitic mind on 
its highest plane of religious possibility ; however restricted 
by national limits that God might be, it was still an ever- 
potent educative force of a progressive kind. And we are 
not surprised to find that, ere long, the higher minds of the 
nation began to recognise its full significance. The masses 
of tlie people accepted Jahveh as a great self-subsistent 
moral being with whom they had a covenant of works very 
much of the nature of a business contract. He was doubt- 
less to the people, till post-exilic times, a mere God of the 
Hebrews whose seat was Sinai, and the worship of Him 
did not preclude the worship of other gods. But the more 
thoughtful spirits evolved out of the whole a nobler and freer 
spiritual life than any mere official priesthood could have 
conceived. These men were called the prophets ; they began 
to prophesy a purely spiritual faith as early as the eighth 



THE SEMITIC RACES 73 

century b. c, although we are justiiied m holding that from 
Samuel downwards the larger conceptions were steadily- 
growing, though probably confined to a restricted class. 
The prophets, until post-exilic times, represent in their 
teaching the highest education — an education which, in its 
highest as in its lowest form, was always religious. They 
maintained the idea of Jahveh in all its purity. They did 
not disdain the ritual and ceremonials of the Law, but they 
represented the spirit and not the mere outward form of 
Hebraism, and were distinguished by profound thought, theo- 
logical and ethical. They thus exercised a powerful influence 
on the life and polity of the Jews, recalling princes and peo- 
ple ahke to the worship of the true God, and that ' in spirit 
and in truth.' They held, even more than the priestly order, 
the principles of the theocratic constitution of society, but in 
a broader and more liberal sense. The gradually increasing 
psalter was meanwhile giving lyrical expression to intense re- 
ligious emotion, and supporting the high prophetic teaching. 
During this prophetic period down to the Exile, the 
class of scribes {hoohnen is the translation of the Hebrew), 
mostly, doubtless, belonging to the priestly, or at least Leviti- 
cal, order, were growing in importance. Priests and scribes 
do not seem, however, to have been strictly differentiated 
till after the Exile. The chief function of the former was 
the Temple services, of the latter the preservation and 
teaching of the Law. Temple and Law, it has been said, 
imply priest and scribe. The scribe always comprised many 
members of the priest class, but the function was one 
which was during the prophetic period, no less than in the 
post-exilic, open to laymen as in Egypt. Their precise func- 
tion before the exile is not ascertained ; but we may infer 
from the word itself and from the early traditional influence 
of Egypt, that they were engaged in such transcriptions of 
sacred and historical literature as were required.^ They also 

1 I have read much, merely as a layman desirous to get at the truth as 
regards the Israelites, and it appears to me that to the historian it matters 
little whether the Hexateuch was formulated after the Captivity or not. In 



74 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

acted as notaries among the people. After the exile, how- 
ever, and the cessation of the Great Synagogue, those who 
followed this function were the recognised Masters of the 
' law and the prophets ' and continuators of tradition. They 
thus constituted a learned and progressive lay order of stu- 
dents and teachers, apart from, but not necessarily in opposi- 
tion to, the sacrificial priesthood. I write of these things in 
general terms because I cannot find that there is a consensus 
of opinion as to the details of the organisation of priest and 
scribe and their mutual relations after the Exile. The fact of 
the rise of the scribes to importance as an academic class is 
enough for the purposes of a student of education.^ 

We thus find among the Jews three classes of men, all of 
whom were engaged in the preservation and gradual develop- 

countries like Egypt, where the people had a mania for recording all contem- 
porary events on stone or papyrus, oral tradition was superseded; but in the 
rise of other civilisations we find that the handing down orally of sacred doc- 
trines with their ever-growing accretions, was common. Even in post-exilic 
times we find this practice in Judaea when writing might have been alone 
resorted to. It is only ignorance of the origins of the religious scriptures of 
other nations which would make us doubt the possibility of the substantial 
truth of a Jewish pre-exilic tradition of the Law. Tlie formulation may have 
begun in the reign of Josiah, say about 630 B. c, and have been completed by 
Ezra ; but it was the formulation of what already existed and had been pre- 
served by tlie priesthood, partly at least in writing. No one, I suppose, asserts 
that all the details of the ceremonial law are Mosaic. It is enough that we 
recognise a growth out of a central idea and see the fruitful beginnings of the 
Law carried out by the priesthood, and illuminated by the prophets, and at a 
certain date (post-exilic) taking systematic written form. This is the com- 
mon history of national religions ; and I do not see why we should be so 
unhistorical, and thei'efore so unscientific, as to treat the organised Jewish 
system very much as if it were an invention of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the 
case of a tradition chiefly oral and only partly written and wholly edited 
with a purpose, one would expect composite books. Of course, I cannot speak 
as an expert, but the ' intelligent layman ' has his rights. I would, in this 
connection, direct special attention to Professor Robertson's Early KelUjion oj 
Israel. 

1 With scribes on one side of them in Egypt, and on the other in Babylon 
and Assyria, it is surely quite in accordance with recognised historical prin- 
ciples to regard tlie scribe organisation after the Exile as merely a develop- 
ment of an order which had existed in sonae form or other from the time of 
Samuel at least. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 75 

ment of the Mosaic monotheism, the Sinaitic moral law ^ and 
the civil law based on it. The literature of the country, 
lyrical, historical, and theological, all gathered round the one 
central thought of Jahveh. The ' masses ' were continually 
falling into idolatry and forgetting the best tradition of their 
fathers ; but under the influence of the ' classes,' of whom we 
have been speaking, the great tradition was always living 
and gradually developing (especially from 800 b. c. onwards) 
from a tribal religion with its tribal god who, though supreme, 
admitted of the worship of other gods, into a religion of 
genuine monotheism and of universal characteristics. The 
God of the Jews, as conceived by the prophets and psalmists, 
a God of justice, truth, and compassion, might indeed have 
become the recognised God of the whole earth but for the 
over-elaboration of religious observances and legal technical- 
ities by the post-exihc scribes. 

The tribe of Semites out of whom came Genesis, the Book 
of Job, the Psalms, the eloquent utterances of the Prophets, 
the Proverbs, and the post-exilic Book of Wisdom, stands 
apart from all other ancient races, and was manifestly des- 
tined for a special mission to the world. When we bear in 
mind too, the concentrated intensity of the Jewish personal 
character, and of their family life, we see in the very narrow- 
ness which accompanied that intensity, the possibility of 
going far. The ' I am that I am ' of Moses, whether promul- 
gated in these abstract terms by him or not, and, though to 
the masses for centuries little more than a tribal God, as 
was the case with the primitive gods of all nations, was yet a 
spiritual God who brooked no equal. The idea had a power- 
ful formative influence ; and this all the more because it was 
possible for the primary conception to be identified in the 
course of time with an Universal Unseen self-conscious Spirit. 
Moreover, tliis God Jahveh, as I have pointed out, was not 

1 I am quite well aware that the Decalogue, as we have it, is ascribed to 
the reign of Josiali ; but I cannot but conclude that the elements of the Deca- 
logue were contained in the Law imposed by Moses. Much of it may be 
found in the Egyptian religion (Confession before Osiris). 



76 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

only a spiritual but an ethical Being, concerned in the moral 
order and having personal relations to all His creatures. It 
is true that the observances of thanksgiving and sacrifice and 
of formal obedience to the law which this God demanded of 
all had very much the air of a business contract, as I have 
indicated above, in which each side was expected to fulfil his 
respective obligations ; but none the less was the idea moral- 
ising, and itself sufficient to educate a primitive race, while in 
the hands of the prophets it expanded into a pure spiritualism. 
And are we not sane historians when we add that, whatever 
might be the defections of the Israelites, however gradual their 
rehgious growth, what may be called the Mosaic idea of 
Jahveh must have contained the germ of such possibilities, 
and, consequently, have been from the first a God unhke the 
other gods of the Canaanites ? 

EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG AMONG THE JEWS GENERALLY 

If we take a general, and at the same time, it is to be 
admitted, a somewhat ideal, view of the education of the 
Jewish race, we shall find its beginnings and its specific 
character expressed in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy : — 

' Hear, O Israel : The Lord our God is one Lord : And 
thou shalt l(.ive the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, 
which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and 
thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt 
talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when 
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and 
when thou risest up.' 

The father and mother were thus the divinely appointed 
teachers. As has been said, ' The dwellings of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob were at once house, school, state, and 
church.' The family life was intense, and the more so that 
the Law thus directly addressed parents and placed on them 
the responsibility for the moral and spiritual well-being of 
their children. To the Jews more than to any other race we 
may apply the words of Shakespeare: 



THE SEMITIC RACES 77 

Let never day nor night unhallowed pass, 
But still remember what the Lord hath done. 

2 Henry VI. ii. 

As might be expected, respect for parents and elders was 
rigidly enforced. 

Tlaou shalt honour thy father and thy mother, &c. 
Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head. 

The family bond, so potent among the Jews, embraced 
God Himself, demanding, as Father of the race, implicit 
obedience from His children. 

If we may infer from the Proverbs of Solomon that max- 
ims and reflections such as are collected in that book were 
in general currency, we may further conclude that the 
domestic education was powerfully reinforced by traditions 
of practical wisdom. The Book of Euth also could have 
emanated only from a people sensitive to the finer and more 
spiritual significance of domestic relations, while the post- 
exilic Book of Wisdom gives us a religious philosophy of 
life. Accordingly, we may say that a present God, whom to 
fear was ' the beginning of wisdom,' the honouring of par- 
ents and elders, a sacred family life, the memory of a great 
history, the practical wisdom of proverbs, and a gradually 
growing lyric psalmody, constituted the elements of the 
education of the masses down to the time of the Exile. 
' My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not 
the law of thy mother ' (Prov. i. 7). No special puhlic 
means, however, were taken by the Jews any more than by 
other nations to give education to the people, so that the 
fundamental conception of the equality of all before God, a 
thoroughly Jewish idea, remained a barren conception so far 
as organised action to raise all to a certain level of intelli- 
gence and moral life was concerned. In post-exilic times it 
was otherwise. 

Such, speaking generally, were the life and education of 
the Jewish people ; but to understand them more fuUy we 



78 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

must look at tliem in their historical development. The 
domestic tradition varied, and, as generation succeeded gen- 
eration, grew richer and fuller. It is true that among the 
Jews, as among all other nations in pre-christian times, the 
culture of the period, whatever it miglit be, was confined to 
the upper classes of priest, scribe, prophet, and the lay aris- 
tocracy. On the other hand, every nation, as a whole, lives 
in a certain atmosphere of religion and morality, and all 
participate, in part at least, in the life and thought of the 
more educated. All are borne along in the main current. 
I think we may say that this was the case among the Jews 
more than in any other ancient nation. Their literature was 
of a grave, thoughtful, and earnest type, and it might be 
said that it was above the understanding of the mass ; but 
none the less was it the expression of the true life and char- 
acter of the people, permanent and enduring amidst all their 
deviations from the path pointed out to them by Moses and 
the prophets. 

In truth, from Moses downwards even to this day, the 
central religious conception of the Jewish mind was the 
great educative force, both in its early rudimentary, and 
later universalised, form. But in the case of a people which 
had so long a history and encountered such varying fortunes, 
it is necessary to look at their education as it existed at dif- 
ferent periods of their civilisation. 

EPOCHS OF JEWISH EDUCATION 
We may distinguish four epochs of Jewish education. 

The First Period 

The first period extends from the emigration from Egypt 
down to Samuel and Saul. Samuel died 1043 B.C. During 
this period the Hebrews were still largely a pastoral and 
wandering race, and were fighting for the conservation of 
such permanent settlements as they had made. The differ- 
ent tribes were very loosely connected. The centre of the 



THE SEMITIC RACES 79 

Mosaic teaching was to be found with the ark and the Tab- 
ernacle, which were in the keeping of the Aaronic priestly 
family. Local altars were erected by the people in various 
places and sacrifices offered, not always to Jahveh alone ; for 
in very many cases the tribes had lapsed into idolatries. 
And yet in the domestic teaching of the rising generation the 
Mosaic ideas of " God and Lord " could not have been any- 
where wholly lost. The effect of this tradition in moulding 
the character of the Hebrews must have been great. The 
existence and recognition of leaders or tribal captains, under 
the name of judges, in whose hands lay the application to 
the ordinary affairs of life of the Mosaic teaching, concurred 
with the one central Tabernacle and its priesthood to main- 
tain a certain unity of belief and life, spite of constant lapses 
into idolatries. The movement favoured by Samuel which 
led to the anointing of a king is itself evidence that notwith- 
standing many backslidings, the national imity, as consti- 
tuted by the idea of Jahveh, was profoundly felt. The 
education of the people by this idea was going on. National 
songs were handed down along with the national history and 
religious festivals. Writing in the form of inscriptions on 
stone was known, and writing, it is said also, on parchment 
or paper ; but this only as the accomplishment of a few. 

Even the education of the priesthood must have been 
entirely confined to preserving and extending the Mosaic 
tradition. We must remember, however, that in the case of 
the Jews this tradition, as I have shown, meant a great deal. 
For the religious and civil polity were not dissociated. 
Morality, civil law, and religion were one ; and these, too, 
were bound up with a great history. We find during this 
period the existence of what survived even after the destruc- 
tion of the Jewish nationality — the interweaving of religious 
feeling with the moral law and the civil law. The distribu- 
tion of the Levites among the tribes must have helped to 
maintain the tradition of the law among the whole body of 
the people. Some learned Jews who write on the education 
of their race would claim a knowledge of mathematics, geog- 



80 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

rapliy, and liistory for the Levitic scribes during this early 
period. But there is no evidence of this. 

The Second Period 

The second period extends from Samuel till 538 B.C. — the 
return from the Babylonian Captivity. The Hebrews had 
now become an agricultural, as well as pastoral, people, liv- 
ing for the most part in villages and cities, from which they 
went out to their daily work. They were consequently in 
closer communication with each other. But as regards the 
mass of the people there is not yet evidence of any instruc- 
tion save that which oral tradition afforded. Sacrifices at 
local altars (though often taking the form of idolatrous ser- 
vices) doubtless helped to maintain this. Boys accompanied 
their fathers to their daily labour at the field or workshop, 
girls were trained at home in domestic arts, cooking, weav- 
ing, and the making of garments. Music, dancing, and song 
were practised, and there can be no reasonable doubt that 
during this period many of the psalms were composed, and 
influenced, while expressing, the life of a considerable portion 
at least among the population. The erection of the Temple, 
to wliich all citizens were required to repair at certain periods, 
helped to give unity to religious belief, and intensify the 
national feeling. 

Education of the higher section of Society. — The 
priesthood, as the depositary of the growing historical and 
judicial literature, was daily extending the moral and civil 
law which was studied as part of its function, while scribes 
(generally Levites, if not priests of the higher order) seem to 
have been employed to make transcriptions. The scribes 
also acquired a certain knowledge of the law and acted as 
notaries among the people and helpers in the adjusting of diffi- 
culties. (For the early existence of scribes, vide Joshua 
xviii. 9.) 

But the most interesting fact during this period was the 
rise of the prophets, who are mentioned as early as Samuel. 
There can be little doubt, I think, that these bands of men 



THE SEMITIC RACES 81 

had, to begin with, a very loose organisation, and might be 
regarded as rehgious revivalists — many of them wild, un- 
educated, and fanatical. But from among them came the 
greatest Jewish intellects. From the eighth century to the 
fifth century B.C. we have such of their writings as have sur- 
vived, and they constitute a permanent part of world-litera- 
ture. The prophets were, as I have already said, quite 
outside the ceremonial priesthood, and as a body they had 
for their aim the maintenance and purifying of the idea of 
Jahveh in its monotheistic and ethical sense. Their text 
was, ' I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of 
God more than burnt offerings.' That there were fortune- 
tellers and hypocrites among those who assumed the name is 
not to be doubted ; that most of them believed in divination 
and magic, is only to say that they belonged to their own 
period of world-history ; that many of them used their sup- 
posed magical powers for their own pecuniary profit is only 
to say that they were men. Take them as a whole, however, 
the formative principle which entered into this new organisa- 
tion was a spiritual one. They generally lived in community, 
and tradition says that they occupied rude huts of their own 
erection, and wore a characteristic dress. Confraternities 
(sometimes called schools) arose in connection with this move- 
ment ; we find them (though not as contemporary institu- 
tions) at Gibea, Eama, Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal.^ Let us 
specially note that the students in these schools were not nec- 
essarily Levites. Prophets were essentially a lay order, and 
it may almost be said that they stood to the religious and 
social life of the time very much in the relation in which 
some of the monastic orders stood to European society in the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries. These prophets and ' sons of 
the prophets ' as (the aspirants were called) constituted (ac- 
cording to Eabbinical tradition) colleges numbering from 
fifty to four hundred which were somewhat of the nature of 

1 I follow in all this the Jewish tradition. ' The higher criticism ' rejects 
much of what I say. In the pages that precede there is nothing inconsistent 
with the best results of the ' higher criticism.' 

6 



82 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

theological institutions, and were presided over by a senior 
member formally elected. Music and sacred poetry were 
studied as well as the profouuder aspects of theology. Out 
of these ' schools,' or at least out of this class, came the 
national poets and historians. As preachers, the prophets 
promulgated the righteous government of the world ; they 
inculcated morals and taught a spiritual life far transcending 
the religion of mere Temple services, protesting also against 
the idolatries and immorality often associated with worship 
in the ' high places.' The existence of this class is the most 
interesting fact in the higher education of the Jews. Whether 
the tradition as given above is to be accepted or not in all its 
details, it is substantially true. The actual organisation of 
colleges may be more than questionable. 

During this period, writing became customary, and priestly 
decisions on questions of law were thus preserved while co- 
temporary historical records were made, or added to. The 
accumulation of legal decisions added to the learning and 
importance of the sacerdotal class, many of whom were also 
scribes. 

While it cannot be said that the education of the people, 
as a whole, had altered its domestic and traditionary form, 
this is not true of the higher section of society from David 
onwards. It is not to be supposed that the prophets spoke 
to empty air : they had an audience, and such of their lofty 
spiritual conceptions as found expression in lyrics would 
easily find their way even among the masses. We are, in- 
deed, quite justified in dating the fact and influence of the 
prophets from Samuel onwards. For it is in direct contra- 
diction of all the principles applied to historical investigation 
to imagine that men like Amos and Hosea had no prede- 
cessors. * The condition we find prevailing at the time of 
the first admitted literary compositions implies an antecedent 
period of literary activity and religious education ' (Professor 
Eobertson, p. 70). And the words of Amos and Hosea 
themselves (see the passages quoted by Professor Eobertson) 
fully justify our conclusions, if it be the truth we seek and not 



THE SEMITIC RACES 83 

the cheap reputation of the man who is up to the fashion of 
the hour in criticism. The existence of the prophets, I have 
said, imphes an audience and numerous sympathisers, while 
the existence of written prophecies presumes that there were 
people who can read them. That writing and reading were 
pretty widely spread during the latter half of the period of 
which I am speaking there can be no reasonable doubt. It 
does not follow that there were ' schools ' in our modern sense 
of the word. Priests and scribes would, according to the uni- 
versal Oriental custom, be taught at the Temple, or wherever 
there were priests ; and it is probable that the teaching was 
individual teaching. 

While it is doubtless correct to say that reading of MS. 
rolls and writing were confined to the upper section of 
society, we are not to conclude that the teaching of the grow- 
ing literature of the nation did not reach the masses of the 
people, and influence, if not mould, their lives. Amos himself 
was one of the people. It is only the other day that the arts 
of reading and writing were unknown to the masses in Eng- 
land. 

The Tliird Period 

PERIOD OF THE SCRIBE AND THE SYNAGOGUE 

{Decree of Cyrus 537 b. c. Ezra 458 b. c.) 

After the rebuilding of the Temple (the dedication was 
516 B. G.) and the return of Ezra (458 B. c), we have a new 
development. For a time, the Judaic organisation, never 
fully expressed or stringently enforced owing to the constant 
lapse of kings and people into Canaanitish and Phoenician 
idolatries, had been broken in pieces. Semitic immigrants had 
found their way into the southern as they had formerly done 
into the northern kingdom, and the memory of the Mosaic 
tradition and all that so signally differentiated the Hebrews 
from other Semites had been imperilled. The most strenu- 
ous efforts were now made to restore what had been lost and 
to formulate the whole Jewish conception of theocratic tradi- 



84 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

tion. More than ever before, we now find a polity organised 
on the basis of a common religious idea and administered by- 
religious functionaries. The high priest was now the true 
king, and the council or senate of which he was president, 
composed of elders and scribes as well as priests, governed 
all thiuffs both civil and ecclesiastical. 

The prophets now disappear, but they had left behind a 
rich inheritance to the people. Their lofty utterances were 
now, as written documents, accessible to all who could read 
or listen intelligently to reading, and must have been in the 
hio-hest degree educative. For what had been their aim from 
the time of Amos and Hosea in the eighth century B. c. ? To 
abolish all idolatry and to purify and exalt the popular con- 
ceptions of the national God, as the God of the human race, 
who cared less even for Israel than for righteousness. They 
taught that the right, the just, the good were the attributes 
of Jehovah, and thus gave him an universal character. All 
nations were to be brought to Him. He was no longer the 
mere ' Hearer ' of Israel. Priestly sacrifices were as nothing 
in the eyes of the universal God of heaven and earth, com- 
pared with integrity of heart and purity of conduct. In 
truth, religious faith and philosophic contemplation of the 
graver aspects of human life had reached in the writings of 
the prophets and in the psalter to the highest expression 
which the world had ever seen or, probably, ever will see. 
These writings were now the possession of the nation, al- 
though for want of schools they could influence them only 
through the priestly and higher classes. Their teaching, 
however, would receive confirmation and an ever-fresh im- 
pulse from the prescribed periodical visits to the Temple. 

Higher Education. — Meanwhile there was arising a 
class of learned men side by side with the priesthood. The 
scribes, who had been coming more into prominence even 
before the Exile, had, before 300 B.C., become an important 
order. As the name and function of scribe was open to all, 
it is to be regarded as a lay order like the schools of the 
prophets. A priest or Levite might be a scribe, but the pro- 



THE SEMITIC RACES 85 

fession was not confined to auy order. Men of various occu- 
pations were also scribes. Ezra, fifth century B.C., was both 
priest and scribe. After the return from the Captivity the 
scribe class gradually increased in number. They became 
in fact the learned and legal class, and as such the more 
eminent of them were teachers — expounders of the law. 
They also extended the law by their glosses and interpreta- 
tions. The prophets were thus practically superseded by a 
written law and an authoritative oral interpretation, out of 
which came the Talmud. 

The legal tradition of the scribes, based on the law, was 
oral, and the amount of memory work demanded of those 
who would excel in this profession as teachers or advisers 
was very great. They taught chiefly in the porches of the 
Temple (the headquarters being Jerusalem) and in syna- 
gogues, and gradually the whole law and its application to 
the affairs of life fell into their hands. Unless they had pri- 
vate means they did not always devote themselves exclusively 
to study and teaching, but followed also some special indus- 
try. These schools of the scribes were also headquarters of 
disputation by which difficult points were settled. Their 
teaching was for all, there being nothing esoteric in Judaism. 
They came to be known in the beginning of the Christian 
era as the ' Eabbinical ' schools, and acquired gradually an in- 
fluence with the people greater than that of the priests. The 
heads of these schools were first technically called ' Eabbins ' 
(Masters) about the time of Christ. 

It was a great fall, certainly, from the schools of the 
prophets to the schools of the scribes — from the spiritual 
life to the formal, legal, and external ; but unquestionably 
the gradual multiplication of legal dicta and prescriptions and 
of ritual observances tended to preserve the Jewish nation in 
its exclusiveness and in ' soundness of faith.' The instruc- 
tion of youth formed one of the chief functions of the order. 
' Every eminent teacher of the law . . . collected round him 
a larger or smaller number of young men,' says Schiirer, 'who 
desired to be educated by him so as to become capable scribes. 
With this purpose in view there existed school-houses in 



86 , PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

which the law was methodically taught. In Jerusalem they 
assembled in the outer porch of the Temple. Teachers and 
scholars sat, the teacher being generally raised a little above 
the level of his pupils. The instruction was oral and dispu- 
tatory. The teacher asked, how must it be done (or deter- 
mined) in this or that case. And the scholars had to answer. 
They were also at liberty to put questions to the teacher.' 
The great aim was to receive in the memory, and to reproduce, 
what was taught; and this latter in identical terms. The 
pupil, as was the general Oriental practice, hung on the Hps 
of his master. All this presumed a prior elementary instruc- 
tion, but this must have been, largely at least, domestic, for 
there is no evidence of the existence of elementary schools. 

During the centuries immediately preceding the birth of 
Christ, the growing power of the scribe (or Eabbinical) schools 
threw the priesthood more and more into the shade, confin- 
ing them to functions of sacrifice, ceremonial, and govern- 
ment. After the destruction of the Temple by the Eomans, 
A.D. 70, the teaching scribes called Kabbins finally superseded 
the priesthood. This development of a learned order is the 
leading fact of this period of Jewish educational history. 
Besides the interpretation of written statutes by common 
sense, these teachers and expounders of the law believed that 
they alone were the vehicles of the development of the Mosaic 
law outside the Torah or Pentateuch. This unwritten and 
ever-growing tradition (Massorah and Kabbala) gave them 
great power. 

In these schools of the scribes all learning was concen- 
trated, but the priesthood and the higher laity generally 
shared in the educational advance. The learning of the 
time entered into the higher course of study — not only 
mathematics and astronomy, but, from the third century B. c, 
Hellenic literature and philosophy. 

Popular Education, — But while the higher classes of 
the community shared in the progressive movement which 
was in the hands of the scribes, an educational change had 
begun among the masses of the people of still greater sig- 
nificance than tlie schools of the scribes. This was the 



THE SEMITIC RACES " 87 

gradual institution, from the time of Ezra, of synagogues 
throughout the land, where the law might be weekly read and 
expounded to the people, and prayer and praise offered. We 
can easily see that the influence of these local schools of re- 
ligion must have been incalculable. Youn"- and old benefited 
by them. It was, doubtless, to the Central Council at Jeru- 
salem constituted in the time of Ezra and Nehemiali that the 
Jews owed these institutions — the prototype of the Christian 
parochial system. Scribes read and taught in the synagogues ; 
but it was competent for the elders of the people to conduct 
service, so that here again as in the case of the prophets, we 
have cropping out the essentially lay and unsacerdotal char- 
acter of the most theocratic of races. All the people might 
now be regarded as students of the law and the prophets. 
In the fourth century B. c. there were synagogues in all 
towns, and in the second century in villages also. 

Dean Milman says, speaking of this movement : ' In ad- 
dition to the central Temple and its ceremonial the Jew now 
had his synagogue — where, in a smaller community, he as- 
sembled, with a few of his neighbours, for divine worship, 
for prayer, and for instruction in the law. The latter more 
immediately, and gradually the former, fell entirely under 
the regulation of the regular interpreter of the law, who, we 
may say, united the professions of the clergy and the law — 
the clergy considered as public instructors ; for the law- 
school and the synagogue were always closely connected, if 
they did not form parts of the same building. Thus there 
arose in the state the curious phenomenon of a spiritual 
supremacy distinct from the priesthood, for though many of 
these teachers were actually priests and Levites, they were 
not necessarily so — a supremacy which exercised the most 
unlimited dominion, not formally recognised by the consti- 
tution, but not the less real and substantial, for it was 
grounded in the general belief, ruled by the willing obedi- 
ence of its subjects, and was rooted in the very minds and 
hearts of the people, till at length the maxim was openly 
promulgated, " the voice of the Eabbi the voice of God." 
Thus, though the high priest was still the formal and ac- 



88 - PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

knowledged head of the state, the real influence passed away 
to these recognised interpreters of the divine word.' (Mil- 
man, ii. 410). The attendant or beadle of the synagogue, it is 
said, taught the children during the week, and thus the syna- 
gogues gradually became schools for the young as well as 
the adult. But it is not to be inferred from this that even 
so late as three centuries B.C., instruction in reading, writmg, 
and arithmetic reached any, save a small proportion of the 
general population, except in so far as it was home teaching. ^ 
This proportion, however, went on increasing, and, it would 
appear, with considerable rapidity, after the Maccabean re- 
volt, 167 B.C. Still I thmk we may fairly conclude that for 
about four centuries before Christ, elementary instruction 
was generally accessible through individual public teaching 
or parental teaching, and that clever and energetic boys 
could thus raise themselves above the humbler ranks of 
poverty. Popular education was, however, education hy the 
synagogue, which brought home to every small community 
of Jews the central idea of their faith and the system of 
morality, law, and ritual based on it. Speaking of the 
synagogue Wellhausen says (p. 159), ' The Bible became the 
spelling-book, the community a school, rehgion an affair of 
teaching and learning. Piety and education were inseparable. 
Whoever could not read was no true Jew.' 

The services of the synagogue were : 1. The recital of 
what was substantially a Creed. 2. Prayer. 3. Pteading 
and expounding of Scripture. 4. The Blessing. And the 
whole was under the general control of a Board of Elders 
with a chief or president. Nor did the Eeader merely read : 
he expounded, following the example of Ezra and his friends, 
of whom Nehemiah (viii.) says, ' They read iij the book in 
the law of God, distinctly : and they gave the sense, so that 
they understood the reading.' 

Quite apart, then, from the educational and formative 
influence of the great stream of religious tradition supported 

^ There is no actual evidence of the existence of schools foi' children before 
200 B.C. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 89 

by sacrificial acts and solemn festivals at Jerusalem/ we 
must fix attention on the pre-exilic schools of the prophets 
and the post-exilic organisation of the scribes as truly repre- 
senting the higher education of the Jews. As to the former, 
I have already said that many who attached themselves to 
the prophetic communities had a low enough moral standard 
and looked to divination and soothsaying as the source of 
their power over the people and of profit to themselves. But 
in all religious and academic orders, we find men who fail to 
rise to the idea which first constituted the order and con- 
tinues to maintain it in existence. With all their defects 
they were all members of a voluntary religious community 
out of which from time to time rose men of light and lead- 
ing — many doubtless whose names have perished. The 
prophetic studies apart from theology were (tradition says, 
and as I have already mentioned) music and verse, mathe- 
matics and Chaldaean astronomy, as well as the law and 
its spiritual interpretation. I do not mean to say that all 
this was thoroughly organised, but it was an operative 
reality. Nor could these communities have existed without 
finding a response in the minds of (at least) the higher 
classes of the community, and influencing the tone of thought 
among the common people. To enter into this field of reli- 
gious and intellectual activity it was not, let me again point 
out, necessary to be a priest or Levite, and this is an impor- " 
taut fact to the historian of education. The prophets were 
a lay order, though not excluding Levites. 

After the rebuilding of the Temple (516 B.C.) although 
we still have one or two prophets, the intellectual life of the 
Jews passed, as we have seen, into the keeping of the 
organised scribes. (They were frequently organised into 
Guilds.) This organisation furnished men to read and inter- 
pret the law and the prophets in every part of the kingdom 
and also among the dispersed colonies ; while public worship 

1 Doubtless this kind of education was common to all nations, but it is 
the l-i7id and qualitii of the tradition that is all-ipiportant as a formative 
power. (Compare the Aztecs. ) 



90 PRE- CHRIS TIAN ED UCA TION 

and sacrifice and the offering of incense were still centralised 
at Jerusalem with a view to the preservation of their purity 
(although the ark of the covenant was now lost). The 
scribes were hterary men, learned in the law, and not only 
teachers of the law but alive to all the educational influ- 
ences of their time. Hellenic speculation and literature 
gradually found their way among them. It is not to be 
supposed that all of this order had wide intellectual interests ; 
but among them were many who studied the Greek language 
and literature, mathematics, foreign tongues, geography, and 
such science as was current, including astronomy. There also 
grew up among them a belief hi immortality and the resur- 
rection of the body.* They were, moreover, as far as the law 
was concerned, progressive ; for they assumed the authority 
of continuous oral tradition which enabled them, by interpre- 
tations and glosses and artificial constructions, to adapt the 
law to changing circumstances. A bad use unfortunately 
was made of this freedom to multiply forms and ceremonies, 
and to confound the petty with the important in morality and 
religion. Prescription and proscription of certain outward 
acts characterised these teachings — acts which in themselves 
had no spiritual significance. The burden which they gradu- 
ally imposed on the people (as did the Brahmans in India) 
was greater than they could bear ; although the more zealous 
delighted in it. The point of interest for us, however, is 
that they were an educated and studious and learned body 
of men. They had to translate the Hebrew scriptures into 
the Aramaic dialect, for the majority had by this time ceased 
to understand the ancient Hebrew tongue. They also formed 
the literature of the people ; for out of their schools came 
the Talmud. The Talmud began in the production of the 
Mishnah, a paraphrase of the law. Then followed in future 
generations commentaries, homilies, &c., which, with a large 
mass of oral tradition, constituted the Talmudic literature, 

1 The liiilk of the nation were Phai'isees accepting the doctrine of the 
scribes. The small Essenic party were an offshoot of the Pharisees with 
mystical and ascetic beliefs. The Sadducees were chiefly a political party. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 91 

all centring round the law and its interpretation and practi- 
cal application. 

As tradition accumulated, the schools of the scribes, as 
depositaries of all learning, bearing alike on the great and 
small affairs of life, became a dominating force in the life of 
the nation. They made their power felt as guides in the 
whole business of life and as deciders of cases among the 
whole population, and exercised an intellectual despotism. 
After the fall of Jerusalem, a.d. 70, they succeeded as Eab- 
bins to the position and privileges of priesthood. So great 
was the mass of oral and written tradition that to be a worthy 
Eabbi demanded very great learning. [It was 190 a.d. be- 
fore a critical edition of the Mishnah was issued, and 270 a.d. 
before a critically edited authoritative commentary appeared.] 

I have said that, in addition to the law and the prophets 
and the mass of oral traditions and interpretations, the Greek 
language, (Ireek philosophy, and mathematics were prose- 
cuted by many at least from the third century B.C. Greek 
was esteemed more highly than all other foreign tongues, 
and next to Hebrew was considered the most beautiful of 
all. ' The Torah (Law) may be translated only into Greek, 
because only by this language can it be faithfully rendered.' 
It is further said, 'the Greek language may in every respect 
be used.' It is true that Greek philosopliy was suspected 
and denounced by the Rabbinical doctors for manifest rea- 
sons ; but not more earnestly than by the Christian church 
after the third century a.d. The sages say of the tongue of 
Hellas, that the words ' there is no blemish in her,' may be 
applied to it, for ' it distinguishes itself by a keen sense of 
that which is perfectly noble.' ' There are four languages,' 
observes Rabbi Nathan, ' which are distinguished by superior 
and special qualities. The Greek sounds beautifully in poetry 
on account of its rhythm; the Roman in war, on account of 
its sonorous masculine power ; the Syriac in mournful songs, 
on account of its numerous dull, hollow vowel-sounds ; the 
Hebrew for its clear and articulate utterance in speech.' 



92 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Instruction in Greek, indeed, became quite general before 
the birth of Christ, and a knowledge of the language formed 
an essential part of a good higher education. ^ But the na- 
tional literature, i. e. the Scriptures, the Talmudic Mishnah, 
Gemara, &c., continued to furnish the principal material for 
teaching in the schools. The religious aim was always dom- 
inant, if not exclusive. ^ 

Fourth Period 
PEKIOD OF THE KABBIN AND THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 

(From the Birth of Christ onwards) 

Notwithstanding the great advance in general education 
in the upper half of society, the majority of Jews, it is said, 
could neither read nor write in the generation preceding the 
birth of Christ ; but this fact is comparatively unimportant. 
It was true of England less than 100 years ago. 

The chief educational feature of the period after the 
birth of Christ is the further extension and consolidation of 
the Scribe schools now called Eabbinical schools ; and, along 
with this, the extension of the Eabbinical power. As the 
body of law increased in bulk, the people became more 
and more dependent on Eabbinical experts for advice and 
direction in their social and business relations, as well as for 
instruction in the ' acts ' of religion. An order which was 
at once preacher, teacher, and legal adviser could not fail to 
exercise supreme power ; and, as I have aheady said, it 
became, after the cessation of the Temple sacrifice (a.d. 70), 
the sole authority. 

It was not till a few years before the destruction of 
Jerusalem that primary schools became general, and tliese 
do not concern us so closely as the pre-christian education, 
for nothing later than the second century before Christ can 

1 It is probable that schools of the Hellenic type existed at Jerusalem 
• 200 years B.C. 

2 The vessels of the Temple were marked with Greek letters. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 93 

be regarded as of purely Israelitish growth. Hellenic 
influences had been long felt and acknowledged at the 
headquarters of Judaism. The settlements scattered round 
the Mediterranean coasts had, moreover, reacted powerfully- 
even on the hierarchy at Jerusalem, as well as on the schools 
of the scribes and had probably led to schools of the Hellenic 
type at Jerusalem nearly 200 years b. c. 

In A.D. 64 elementary schools were first made obligatory 
by the high priest Josu^ ben Gamala. One teacher was 
to be employed where there were 25 children, an assistant 
when the number exceeded 25, and two teachers where the 
number of pupils exceeded 40. These schools were now 
everywhere diffused in the countries inhabited by Jews — 
indeed wherever there was a synagogue. The instruction 
was gratuitous. The introduction of alien races and religions 
among the Jews, and the dispersion of the Jews themselves, 
made schools for children, as well as synagogues for adults, 
essential to the protection and preservation of the true faith. 
It was this necessity, and the example of the Greeks, which 
led to the general diffusion of instruction among the people. 
Without the synagogue and its school the national tradition 
and law would have gradually disappeared under foreign 
influences. 

It is interesting to note, however, that the Jews were the 
first to insist on the education of the whole people. All were 
equal before God : the law was laid on each man and was 
not the secret of a class. 

The course of instruction was as follows. From the 
sixth to the tenth year the law (Pentateuch) was the only 
study, along with writing and arithmetic. From the tenth 
to the fifteenth year, the pupil was instructed in that part 
of the Talmud called Mishnah, substantially a paraphrastic 
development of the law. After the fifteenth year the 
Geniara was taught. Learning by rote was an inevitable 
and leading characteristic of such teachings. We can 
easily understand that instruction of this kind must have 
inflicted a grievous burden on young minds and crushed 



94 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

out all spontaneity of life. Doubtless this was quite under- 
stood and intended by the authorities : all were to be cast 
in one mould. Up to the age of thirteen the boy was not 
expected to either know or fulfil the whole law. He tlien, 
at the presumed age of puberty, entered on the rights and 
duties of a full-grown Israelite. 

The pupils wrote on waxen tablets with a style, and 
when advanced, on paper or parchment with a pen, like the 
children of the Komano-Greek world generally. 

In the higher schools Greek, mathematics, and such 
science as was known were taught. 

The sole aim of female education was the making of the 
accomplished housewife, of whom we have a description in 
the Book of Proverbs. 

That the discipline, domestic and other, was in pre- 
christian times severe might be inferred from the intolerable 
nature of the instruction given and from the material re- 
wards and punishments which were so prominent a charac- 
teristic of the Jewish religion. It is in perfect consonance 
with the Judaic code that pain of a bodily kind should be 
the only correction which suggested itself to the early 
Jewish writers when they touched on education. ' He that 
spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him, 
chasteneth him betimes.' — Prov. xiii. 24. ' Chasten thy son, 
seeing there is hope, and set not thy heart on his destruc- 
tion.' — Prov. xix. 18. ' Foolishness is bound up in the heart 
of the child ; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from 
liim.' — Prov. xxii. 15. 'Withhold not correction from the 
child ; for if thou beat him with the rod, he shall not die. 
Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul 
from Sheol' — Prov. xxiii. 13. In Deuteronomy xxi. 18, we 
find that if the rod fail, the son is to be stoned to death 
' at sight ' of the elders of the city. This conception of dis- 
cipline seems to have prevailed till about the time of Christ. 

In so far as severity of discipline was modified after the' 
birth of Christ, it was under the influence of the Talmudic 
writings, and not of the law in its purity. 



THE SEMITIC RACES 95 

The Talmud aoid Education 

The Talmudic writings contain so much that bears on 
education as understood by the Jew when brought under 
humane Hellenic (and doubtless also Christian) influences, 
that I shall add a few remarks on this stage of Jewish 
educational history.^ 

The School and the Schoolmaster. — That the work of the 
school and the function of the teacher hold a high place in 
the Talmud could be shown by numerous quotations. But 
it would be to confound chronology to regard the Talmudic 
precepts as indications of opinion among the ancient Israel- 
ites. They are to be met with only after the Jews had 
been in contact with the Greek and Eoman civilisations, 
while some of them belong to early mediseval history. ' It 
is the breath of school children that sustains society,' says 
E. Jehuda Hanassi. ' He who studies and does not teach 
others is like a myrtle in the desert.' The teachers had to 
be married men and not too young ; for ' instruction by 
young teachers is like sour grapes and new wine ; instruc- 
tion by older teachers, however, is like ripe grapes and old 
wine.' ' Your teacher and your father have need of your 
assistance ; help your teacher before helping your father, for 
the latter has given you only the life of this world, while 
the former has secured for you the life of the world to come.' 

Method. — As regards method, the following text is wise : 
' If you attempt to grasp too much at once, you grasp 
nothing at all.' 

The teachers, after the Oriental fashion, generally relied 
on memory and slavish reproduction. ' First learn by heart 
and then know ' was the governing formula. On the sub- 
ject of memory, it is well said : — ' Four dispositions are 
found among the disciples; he who comprehends quickly 
and quickly forgets ; such an one loses more than he gains : 
he who with difficulty comprehends, but does not readily 

1 I base what I here say on Spiers, and on Gelder's Die Volksduile des Jud. 
Alt., 1872, as verified by reference to other writers, including Dr. Samuel 
Marcus. 



96 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

forget, gains more than he loses : he who comprehends 
easily, but does not easily forget, has a good portion : he 
who slowly comprehends and forgets quickly has an evil 
portion.' One of the instructions for learning by heart 
deserves notice : — 'To speak out loudly the sentence which 
is being learned strengthens the same in the memory.' 
' Open thy mouth in order that thou mayest retain the 
subject of thy study, and that it may remain alive within 
thee.' The wife of Eabbi Meir, on meeting a certain student 
who was learning his lessons in a low tone, rebuked him, 
saying that it was not the right way of learning. ' Eabbi 
Elieser had a pupil who studied without articulating the 
words of his lessons, and in consequence thereof he forgot 
everything in three years.' 

With regard to the system of repetition Eabbi Akiba says : 
' The teacher should strive to make the lesson agreeable to 
the pupils by clear reasons, as well as by frequent repeti- 
tions, until they thoroughly understand the matter, and are 
enabled to recite it with great fluency ' ; but this was a pious 
opinion, not the school practice. A certain Eabbi, it is stated, 
' had a disciple with whom he repeated the subject four hun- 
dred times, until he became a thorough master of the same.' 

Special regard should be had to the child at the beginning 
of his studies, it is said, because ' what is learned as a child 
remains in his memory as ink written on new paper.' 
Nevertheless, as the faculties of boys do not always expand 
with their advancing age, the Talmud advises in case the 
boy does not make progress in his studies, to exercise for- 
bearance towards him up to his twelfth year, but that hence- 
forth he should be dealt with more severely. Experience 
proves, it is said, that children do not begin to show much 
mental capacity as a rule until their twelfth year. 

Further, it is recommended to the teacher to have pauses 
and periods in each subject. ' The Almighty Himself,' it is 
said, ' did not impart the law to Moses all at once, but in 
different divisions and pauses, so as to make it more intelli- 
gible. How much more then ought not this to be done by 



THE SEMITIC RACES 97 

a human teacher ? ' Again : ' He who studies hastily and 
crams too much at once, his knowledge shall diminish ; but 
he who studies by degrees or step by step, shall accumulate 
much wisdom and learning.' 

Brevity in imparting was likewise held to be an indis- 
pensable qualification of the teacher. He should, as much as 
possible, be concise and make use of few words. Far-fetched 
digressions are to be avoided, and that which could be told the 
pupil in one word should not be imparted in three. * One 
should instruct the pupils in the shortest manner possible.' 

Discipline. — The discipline included in the Talmud, un- 
like that of the ancient Jews, is mild and was doubtless 
largely influenced by the teaching of Christ ; but corporal 
chastisement is recognised. ' Although at first there should 
be shown indulgence to the child, yet further on, if it should 
prove stubborn and inattentive, a slight corporal punish- 
ment and some restrictions may be adopted.' The elder 
pupils, however, should not have to undergo corporal pun- 
ishment for two reasons : first, lest it should wound their 
sense of honour ; and secondly, lest it should arouse resist- 
ance. The Rabbins say, ' A man who strikes his grown-up 
son should be earnestly reprimanded, because he transgresses 
the commandment, " Thou shalt not put a stumbling block 
before the blind," ' which is thus explained by Eashi : 
' Because being grown up he might rebel against his father, 
who would thus cause him to sin.' Again, it is enjoined 
that if it should be found necessary to apply corporal pun- 
ishment, it must be inflicted very mildly and the master is 
not to use a cane, but a light strap, in order not to injure 
the pupils. In reference to this we read in the Talmud : 'If 
thou art compelled to punish a pupil, do it only with gentle- 
ness ; encourage those who make progress, and let him who 
does not, still remain in the class with his schoolfellows, for 
he will ultimately become attentive and vie with them.' 
R. Samuel Edels, in his Commentary on the Agadoth, writes : 
'Only those pupils should be punished in whom the master 
sees that there are good capacities for learning and who are 

7 



98 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

inattentive ; but if they are dull and cannot learn, they 
should not be punished.' Just as punishment formed a part 
of school discipline, so also did rewards. For we are told 
in the Talmud that Eabba had in his school some dainties 
of which he would occasionally make a present to his young 
pupils. Again, there is a saying, ' Children should be pun- 
ished with one hand and caressed with two.' 

The school hours were long. 

To conclude : the subjection of the human spirit to the 
conception of absolute Law and the prominence given to ex- 
ternal observances in the conception of religion as a kind of 
contract between God and man, gave birth among the Jews 
to a barren formalism. The spiritual ideas which doubtless 
underlay the whole and preserved the spirit of the ancient 
prophets, were for the few. 

The Jews were par eminence a race of theological genius 
as the Greeks were a race of aesthetic genius. In their 
writings, the personal relations of man to God as a god of 
moral law, found a language for themselves which had 
never been reached by any other nation. The universal 
conception of God as Creator, and Preserver, and Father of 
all His creatures, and as rejoicing in the work of His hands 
which in its turn praised Him, transcended all other human 
interpretations of the divine. But at this point all true 
progress of the intellect and imagination ended. The scien- 
tific and dramatic spirit were alike alien to the Jew. He 
imbibed both from other races. The Judaic theory of life 
required also that the past should be all in all. The 
spiritual unity of the race was doubtless thereby secured, 
but at an enormous sacrifice. 

Christ opens out a wider vista to the eye of man, and at 
no point checks his onward advance. In Him we have a 
transition from the finite to the true infinite in the religious 
conception. The moral ideal supersedes the prosaic morali- 
ties of the understanding, and, seen in God, it becomes the 
spiritual life. With the genuine Jew the personality of God 
was too clearly defined, and His externality as a Law-giver 



THE SEMITIC RACES 99 

too strongly emphasised, to admit of infinite ideas. Again, 
while the identification of religion and the moral law was in 
principle sound, the stereotyping of the latter in external 
observances emanating from an unquestioned authority, 
killed both. A free personal outlook on nature and life was, 
under such conditions, impossible. We must trust human- 
ity as an ever-progressive reason, and take our chance of the 
incidental evils which may attend tlie practice of the 
humanistic free Christian faith. 

Indeed, we can scarcely say that among the Jews religion 
and the moral law, as we now understand these, were one 
(as they boast it was and is), but rather the Sinaitic voice 
of God as despotic command and a corresponding legality — 
a system in which external prescriptions tended to choke 
the purely moral, and still more the spiritual, element of the 
life of mind. The prophets live for all mankind ; to the 
Jew their spiritualism was lost in formalism. Externali- 
ties of technical obedience being rigidly attended to, the Jew 
performed his part of the covenant with God — a mere busi- 
ness transaction. God thereupon was bound to perform 
His part, which in early times was the granting of benefits 
in this life ; at a later period, in this life and the next. 
There can be no spiritual or religious life save that which 
the voice of God penetrates and sanctions, but, with the 
ordinary Jew, this voice of God was, I repeat, an external 
voice; and, practically, in the hands especially of post-exilic 
priests and scribes, it became a detailed series of legal pre- 
scriptions and observances. God stood apart, and, like a 
schoolmaster, imposed rules, with rewards and penalties for 
observance and non-observance. This was the ' letter ' that 
killeth. Christ swept it away and preached the ' Spirit * 
that givetli life, and thus transformed a national into an 
universal religion. On the other hand, it has to be observed 
that in all national religions, ancient and modern, we find 
two parties — those who, endowed with a deep religious 
sense, live in the spirit of the religion they profess, regard- 
ing all else as merely symbolic of the inner needs and 



[Ai 



ti' 



100 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

history of the spiritual man, and those for whom the intel- 
lectual dogma and the sensuous symbol and the religious rite 
are all in all. In the case of the Jews, the former found a 
pure and noble expression of their inner life in the Psalms 
and the Prophets, the latter were represented by the scribes 
and Pharisees and the mass of the people. 

It seems strange that a system of life so encumbered with 
ceremonial and externalities should have attracted converts 
in the heathen world. But, before and after the time of 
Christ, Greek, Eoman, and Oriental had lost faith in their 
gods and were looking for God, and for a moral system sanc- 
tioned by Him. This the Jew could give ; and allow the 
proselyte to accept as much or as little of the ceremonial as 
he pleased. 

Authorities. — Many of the books mentioned under 'Egypt,' especially 
Records of the Past. Also History of Babylonia, by George Smith ; Professor 
Tiele's Die Assyriologie, eine Rede ; Assyria, by George Smith ; Maspero's 
Dawn of Civilisation in the East ; Essai sur Thistoire des Arahes, par Caussin 
de Perceval Sir W. Muir's Life of Mahomet. 



Scripture which ends 442 B. c. ; Ranke's History of the World ; Milman's 
History of the Jews; The School System of the Talmud, by Spiers; L'education 
et Vinstruction des enfants chez les anciens Juifs, par J. Simon ; Geschichtc der 
Erz. u. des Unt. lei den Israeliten, von B. Strassburger ; Van Gelder's Die 
Volkschule des Jiid. Alt. 1872 ; Schiirer's Jeioish People in the Time of Christ ; 
Tiele's Outlines of the History of Ancient Religions ; Duncker's History of 
Antiquity ; Die Pddagogik des Tsraelitischen Volkes, &c., von Dr. S. Marcus, 
1877 ; Wellhausen's Israel und Judah; Montefiore's Hibbert Lectures; Graetz's 
History of the Jeivs ; Professor Robertson Smith's writings ; Professor Robert- 
son (of Glasgow), Early Religion of Israel : Lex Mosaica, recently published ; 
Professor Menzies' History of Religion. 

2^ote. — lhare endeavoured, not without great difficulty, to steer my way 
among conflicting accounts. It is impossible to accept the rose-coloured views 
of Jews or those who seem to hold a brief for them, when alleged facts are not 
dated and guaranteed. On the other hand, the facts which are available, 
combined with necessary and irresistible inferences from Jewish history make 
it equally impossible to accept the views of those who would minimise the 
educational work among the Jews themselves, and its significance in the edu- 
cation of the whole race of mankind. 



THE URO-ALTAIO OR TURANIAN 
RACES 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN 
RACES 

The races of mankind not Hamitic, Semitic, and Indo- 
European have been classed as Turanian, or Uro- Altaic; 
but this classification is so inadequate that it will doubtless 
be moditied as ethnology progresses. In the meantime, for 
the Eastern Hemisphere it may be accepted. Omitting the 
merged Accadians of the Mesopotamian basin of whom we 
have already spoken, we have to go north and east to follow 
tlie migrations of the Turanian races. 

The Turanian, or Uro-Altaic, races (so called from the 
Siberian range of mountains of this name) comprise the 
Mongolians, Chinese, Manchus, Japanese, Turks, and Tartars, 
the European Finns, and the original stock of the Hunga- 
rians. Longer than other races they retained nomadic habits, 
and in some districts of the East still retain them. The 
inhabitants who occupied Chaldsea before the arrival of the 
Semites in that region were called Accadians ; and to these 
we have referred in speaking of the Babylonian Semites who 
absorbed them.^ The Turanians generally have a mono- 
syllabic and agglutinative language, and have never exhib- 
ited a capacity for progress either in literature, arts, or 
science beyond a certain fixed point, except under post- 
christian influences. Their highest development is to be 
found in China, where as a civilised power they have existed 
for, certainly, 5,000 years ; and what we have to say of the 
Turanians must be confined to this the highest specimen of 
their social organisation. 

^ The most recent ex])lorations would point to the conclusion that the 
Turanian or Accadian civilisation itself also rested on a prior people. Dr. 
de Lacouperie connects closely the Accadians and Chinese. 



104 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

As tlie education organised among this remarkable people 
affords a curious contrast to that both of the Semitic races 
and of the Asiatic Indo-Germans or Aryans, of whom we 
shall afterwards speak, it is quite worth our while to en- 
deavour to enter into some detail. The Chinese educational 
development is indeed highly instructive both to the educa- 
tional politician and the schoolmaster. 

EDUCATION IN CHINA 

CHAP. I. NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS ' 

China had a consciously organised scheme of education long 
before any other Asiatic or European people. Egyptian 
education existed from an earlier date, but it was never an 
organised system. The Chinese system is instructive as 
well as interesting, because it suggests many considerations 
as to the organisation of education by the State and also as 
to authoritative modes of testing ability and learning which 
bear very directly on European and American education at 
the present day. 

The Chinese empire embraces, besides China proper, 
Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet. It is China 
proper and a portion of the Burmese peninsula, however, 
with which we have to do. The dependencies are in no 
way so advanced in civilisation as China-proper. This por- 
tion of the empire is itself 1,600 miles long and averages in 
breadth 1,100 miles. The population is variously estimated 
at from 300 to 400 milhons. A remarkable evidence of its 
early civilisation is to be found in the Great Wall which 
was constructed in the third century before the Christian 
era and extends up hill and down dale along the northern 
boundary for 1,250 miles, is 20 feet high including the 
parapet of 5 feet, 25 feet thick at the base, and strengthened 
at intervals of 100 yards by square towers from 37 to 50 
feet high. 

In the north the land is elevated ; in the centre it is an 
alluvial plain through which the great rivers Hoang-ho and 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 105 

Yanff-tse-kiancT flow. In the south the land is imclulating 
and interspersed with valleys and mountains. The middle 
region is the centre of the rice, su;,ar, and silk culture; in 
the southern part of it the tea-shrub flourishes ; in the north 
we find the usual food grains. 

The accepted history of China dates from 2,500 years B.C., 
although it is far from trustworthy for long after this date. 
As early as 2205 B.C. we find the country organised as a 
feudal State, the system being somewhat similar to that 
which prevailed in Europe in mediaeval times. In the eigh- 
teenth century B.C. there were seventy-two feudal States. In 
403 B.C. the feudal princedoms had been reduced to seven 
great States, and in 220 B.C. the whole was organised into an 
Empire. There have been many changes of dynasties, but 
the imperial organisation has remained much the same for 
more than 2,000 years. The present dynasty is Manchu and 
dates from 1643 a.d. The native Chinese, however, are fully 
recognised in the highest councils of the emperor as well as 
in the whole administrative system. The imperial govern- 
ment in Peking supervises and controls the administration of 
all the provinces and exercises the power of removing all 
officials. 

Language. — The speech of the Chinese is monosyllabic : 
out of the radical they form compounds. There are no in- 
flections — nay, the same root is retained to denote noun, 
verb, preposition, adverb — the grammatical class to which 
it belongs being indicated by tone, accent, or position alone. 
The language is, in brief, inorganic, a mere aggregate of roots, 
not of letter-sounds. In all speech there must of course be 
organism, but in the case of the Chinese, I suppose we may 
say that the organism is tmderstood ; it is in the thought of 
the speaker and hearer, and not embodied in the forms of the 
language as in Latin or Greek. The speech of the Chinese 
has been aptly compared to that of a child, which utters 
words one after another without forming them organically 
into a sentence. The letters, or shapes to denote words, were 



106 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

originally hieroglyphic or ideographic, the symbols gradually 
losing their ideographic character; and this especially in 
compounds. ' When letters were invented,' the Chinese say, 
' the heavens, earth, and the gods were all agitated. The in- 
habitants of Hades wept at night, and the heavens, as an 
expression of joy, rained down ripe grain.' (Preface to 
Morrison's Dictionary.) There is evidence that writing 
was practised 1,740 years B.C., and it is believed that it existed 
in some form 3,000 years B.C. 

It is important to note, as bearing on the question of 
Chinese education, that the literary language, the language 
of books, is different from the spoken dialects, which are 
numerous ; and that it differs to such an extent as to make 
its acquisition by a native almost as difficult as a foreign 
tongue. 

If the unclassified elements of the language were indif- 
ferent to position 'the labour of arrangement would be 
nothing and style impossible. But most of them appear to 
be endowed with a kind of mysterious polarity, which con- 
trols their collocation and renders them incapable of com- 
panionship except with certain characters, the choice of 
which would seem to be altogether arbitrary. The origin 
of this peculiarity it is not difficult to discover. In this, as in 
other things among the Chinese, usage has become law. 
Combinations which were accidental or optional with the 
model writers of antiquity, and even their errors, have, to 
their imitative posterity, become the jus ct norma loquendi. 
Free to move upon each other when the language was young 
and in a fluid state, its elements have now become crystallised 
into invariable forms. To master this pre-established har- 
mony without the aid of rules is the fruit of practice and the 
labour of years.' ^ 

General Character of the Chinese. — The impression 

made on a stranger by the character of the Chinese people is, 

that it is as a whole child-like, gentle, kindly, and peaceful, 

but it is equally apparent that these qualities are in union 

^ Han Lin Papers. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 107 

with much cunning, suspicion, trickery, and immorality. 
Their industry and contentment are marvellous, and their 
personal habits temperate. It does not appear tliat respect 
for self, and value for self as a personality, is a conception of 
the Chinese mind. The ' person ' is not of the same account 
as among the Aryan races ; the family is the governing 
conception. The personality of the individual is not only 
overshadowed by the family and the state-machinery, 
but is oppressed also by the spirits of the dead which are 
worshipped. 

The Chinese have had their civil revolutions and modifica- 
tions of belief like other people, but as a whole they have 
made little or no progress for more than 2,000 years ; but 
grind on as their fathers did before them. Their enormous 
national self-conceit helps to prevent advance. Philosophic 
speculation and physical science are absent. Literature is 
in the ascendant, but it consists chiefly of a bald kind 
of history, the literature of the sacred books and endless 
commentaries on them. Lyric poetry is cultivated very 
extensively, and the power of writing elegant verses in 
good caligraphy is the highest proof of learning and culture. 
Art, in the higher sense, does not exist, although there is 
much skill and delicacy of execution, and considerable imi- 
tative power.^ At one time the art of landscape painting 
flourished. 

The broad fact for us Europeans to recognise is that in 
this portion of Asia we have a people of Mongolian ex- 
traction, including about a third of the population of the 
world, who, for at least 4,000 years, have had a settled 
system of life and government, and with whom education 
has always been a matter of national importance for nearly 
3,000 years. 

^ There are some men (who may be called Sinophils) who speak in lauda- 
tory terms of the lyrical literature, just as they exaggerate the intellectual 
power of the Chinese, but the specimens given, even allowing for the difficul- 
ties of translation, do not justify their admiration. They read like the Latin 
verses of English schoolboys. See the collection of Romilly Allen. 



108 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 



CHAP. II. RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Sacred Books. — To understand the Chinese attitude of 
mind we should have to understand Confucius, the great 
moral and political philosopher and reformer, who was born 
551 years B.C. But the national life did not start with him. 
The record of his life would itself show, even were there no 
native historical treatises, that China was at the time of his 
birth a civilised country and an organised government with 
many subordinate governors. Confucius himself is most 
careful to insist that he merely revives the customs and be- 
liefs of his ancestors. He led a life of noble example him- 
self : at one time held high in honour, at another dishonoured 
and persecuted, always suffering grief and disappointment at 
the failure of his great scheme of social reform. But he 
professed no novelties ; he rested all liis teaching on the 
sacred books which he edited with annotations. He did 
not, however, alter them or digest them into their present 
form (Legge). His chief addition to the practical philosophy 
of preceding ages was his ' Doctrine of the Mean.' The first 
sentence of this work is as follows : ' What heaven has con- 
ferred is called the nature : an accordance with this nature is 
called the path of duty : the regulation of this path is called 
instruction.' (Legge, 'Keligions of China,' p. 139.) 

The earliest of tlie sacred books was attributed in its 
original form to the first introducer of letters and philosophy 
among the Chinese, Fu-list, to whom the date of 3,323 years 
(less or more) B.C. is assigned. (This, of course, is legendary.) 
The next continuator after Confucius of the philosophy of 
the sacred books was Mencius, who died 317 B.C. Printing 
from blocks of wood was invented in the tenth century of 
our era. The issue of the sacred books was, as a matter of 
course, then multiplied, and much intellectual activity was 
the result, as was the case in Europe after the invention of 
printing. But all this activity was still controlled by super- 
stitious reverence for the past and merely took the form of 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 109 

a further explication and evolution of accepted doctrines. 
The man who seems to have gathered into a focus all the 
intellectual activity of this time was Chow-Tsze. This truly 
eminent philosopher exhibited great ability as an adminis- 
trator, thinker, and writer, and the books issued by him, for 
the most part as commentaries on, and introductions to, the 
sacred books, numbered 23. On them, without derogating 
from the primary authority of Confucius, the life of the peo- 
ple is modelled. He died 1200 A.D. His writings are held 
to contain the true interpretation of Chinese philosophy, but 
by no means on that account to supersede Confucius and the 
sacred books themselves. We must therefore, if we would 
understand the Chinese people and their education, form to 
ourselves some idea of the contents of these books. To 
attempt an account here, in any detail, would be out of 
place ; but we may state, on the authority of Professors 
Legge, Douglas, Tiele and others, all that is necessary to our 
purpose as students of the educational system of China.^ 

The sacred books or scriptures of China consist of ' Five 
Classics ' and ' Four Books.' The five classics are (' Encyc. 
Brit.') : 1. ' The Book of Changes ' (Yi-King) — seemingly an 
effort at a kind of nature-system (obscure magic, says Tiele). 
To this book the date 1150 B.C. is assigned ; 2. ' The Book 
of History ' (Shu-King) ; 3. ' The Book of Odes ' (Shih-King). 
At the time of Confucius there was an official collection of 
3,000 odes, which he reduced to 311, preserving chieily those 
which had a moral and domestic tendency and classifying 
them under four heads : (a) National airs ; (h) The lesser 
eulogies ; (c) The greater eulogies ; (d) The song of homage 
sung by or before the emperor when he sacrificed in the 
name of the State as its high priest. 4. ' The Book of Ptites ' ; 
5. ' Spring and Autumn Annals,' by Confucius. 

The Four Books are of the nature of exposition and com- 
mentaries. (1) The Great Learning ; (2) The doctrine of 
the Mean, these two being continuous treatises; (3) Con- 

1 I follow Leggo where he differs from Tiele, and I have paid due attentioi]: 
to Martin's account. 



110 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

fucian Analecta, or sayings of the master; (4) The works of 
Mencius, by a pupil of that philosoplier. 

Commentaries on the classics and books are very numer- 
ous ; but all have the same characteristics as the originals, 
that is to say, they are ' servile,' ' iterative,' ' cold,' ' formal' 

Philosophical Attitude of the Chinese Mind. — Like 
most moral reformers, Confucius was too intent on the reno- 
vation of the national life around him to concern himself 
deeply with those metapliysical questions which form so 
perennial an attraction for the Indo-European mind. It is 
a mistake, however, to say he was an atheist, unless we are to 
class as atheists men who, denying or doubting a personal 
God, yet believe in a great but mysterious power w^iich gov- 
erns all. That Confucius believed in a personal God is not 
apparent, and it is certain that he purposely declined to go 
far into the discussion of such questions. Morality, social 
order, and propriety of conduct alone interested him, and this 
so profoundly as to exclude from his system of practical 
ethics all other subjects. There can be no doubt, however, 
that he believed in the Supreme One. It is worthy of re- 
mark, and, indeed, full of interest, that, in the very sacred 
books edited by him, there is the recognition of a Supreme 
Being called ' Supreme Euler,' ' Heaven,' and ' Supreme or 
Sovereign Heaven,' and Professor Legge has made it, I think, 
evident that the Chinese were in the earliest times — that is 
to say, the earliest historic times, Monotheists. Chow-tze 
did not profess to originate a philosophy, but to draw it from 
the ancient books by interpretation. But it cannot be said 
that even in his case the thought of a personal God ever 
occurred. At the beginning of all things is what is called 
the ' ultimate principle,' or ' grand extreme,' which is imma- 
terial, which is spirit, which, in brief, is mind. It operates 
to produce the world of nature and man according to an in- 
variable process. Dr. Martin gives this exposition : ' The 
Infinite [Great Extreme] produced the Finite, and the Finite 
produced Light and Darkness.' The 'ultimate principle,' or 
' great extreme,' is, however, frequently spoken of as if it were 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 111 

an independent entity, and sometimes as punishing the evil 
and rewarding the good. But these are evidently figurative 
expressions, and the idea of the Supreme to be found in 
Chinese philosophy is that of a causal principle existing from 
all eternity along with the world or nature, also existing 
from all eternity, the latter exhibiting the mode of operation 
of the ultimate principle in accordance with fixed and un- 
alterable laws. 

Chinese philosophy does not affirm the great fact of Will 
as entering into the scheme of creation. Nor has the ' ulti- 
mate principle ' ethical attributes.-^ Order is its chief char- 
acteristic, and this exhibits itself in the nature of man as 
well as in other creations, and the holy man is he who has a 
clear intuition of the ultimate principle and its ground-pro- 
cesses. Seeing these clearly, he cannot err; knowledge is 
virtue. The nature of man is, to begin with, good in itself, 
for it is the true product of the heavenly order. Chow-tze 
teaches that ' the bright principle of virtue man derives from 
his heavenly origin, and his pure spirit when undarkened 
comprehends all truth, and is adequate to every occasion. 
But it is obstructed by the physical constitution and be- 
clouded by the animal desires so that it becomes obscure.' 
The moral character, to begin with, is determined by the pre- 
vailing influence (primordial harmony or gross matter), and 
mankind are accordingly divided into three classes : * those 
who are good without teaching, those who may be made 
good by teaching, and those who will remain bad in spite of 
teaching' (Martin, p. 129). 

Absolute truth is simply the course or way of nature, and 
he who sees this has absolute truth. Virtue is the complete 
possession of absolute truth by man ; and it is by knowledge 
or study that man attains to truth, and so to virtue. Intel- 
lect is thus the basis of virtue and morality. Private and 
political morality are closely connected. The whole aim of 
the higher teaching of China is, in brief, morality — the 
conduct of life and the art of government. Though China 

1 I do not suppose Professor Legge would admit this. 



112 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

has produced men differing in opinion as to tlie foundation of 
ethics, they have no speculative philosophy in the Aryan 
sense. A very interesting chart of Chinese ethics will be 
found in Dr. Martin's book on education in China. This 
shows considerable power of orderly tabular arrangement in 
the classification of the virtues, but the Chinese mind is not, 
even in tliis its own chosen sphere, analytic. 

Religion. — There are three religions in China: 1. The 
official or state religion, already described in the previous 
section, viz. the ancient doctrine of China handed down from 
remote antiquity, revised by Confucius and commented on 
by him, by Mencius and by Chow-Tsze. It is essentially a 
moral and political system, resting ultimately, however, on a 
recognition of a Supreme God or Divine Order. It recognises 
this Being or Order as a fact simply, and there leaves it, 
lying outside daily life and remote from men. Connected 
with this official religion, however, there is an annual cere- 
monial of worship. It is the State not the individual, the 
emperor, not as priest but as representative of the nation, 
who then worships God. Provincial governors also perform 
the service in the name of the State. This ceremonial is in 
honour of the powers of nature and expresses the dependence 
of man on the order of nature, the productivity of the soil 
and the recurrence of the seasons. It is thus in perfect 
harmony with Chinese religious philosophy, and recognises 
the Supreme Spirit in the sense which I have already 
explained. The remarkable prayers cited by Professor Legge 
C-Religions of China,' p. 43 et seq.), which were offered up at 
the solstitial services of 1538 a.d., testify to a pure and 
exalted Deism in the mind of the then emperor, approximat- 
ing even to Theistic language. But with this solstitial cere- 
monial the Deism as a factor in the life of the Chinese ends.^ 



1 Professor Legge says, p. 114, that there are numerous passages in the 
ancient books speaking of Heaven as approving and disapproving the acts of 
man. But neither in the literature generally nor in the schoolbooks is account 
taken of this. Even the verses quoted by Legge do not necessarily convey 
anything save the general statement that Heaven is on the side of justice and 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 113 

Confucian polity and the worship of ancestors constitute the 
genuine religion of the educated Chinaman. 

The official religion is acquiesced in by all ; but in addi- 
tion, Taoism and Buddhism are professed by the masses of 
the people. Buddhism practically occupies the field. It is 
an importation from India, and as it entered only in 76 a.d., 
it found the Chinese national character already formed. 
Taoism, originally mystical and having affinities with primi- 
tive Buddhism, has degenerated into a religion of spells and 
incantations. The priests profess, like modern spiritualists, 
to hold communication with the spirits of the dead. Bud- 
dhism, again, seems to have degenerated into a system of 
idol-worship. Indeed very early, Gautama Buddha, the 
founder, was himself worshipped as a god. The doctrine of 
transmigration which connects itself with the more popular 
form of this religion would seem to exercise a powerful prac- 
tical influence on the life of the Chinese. The doctrine of 
immortality is blank and undefined. 

Alongside, then, of the intellectual and purely politico- 
moral and abstract deism of Confucius, we find the ceremonial 
periodical nature-worship by the emperor as representing the 
nation; the survival of primitive beliefs in various spirits 
among the people;^ along with ancestor worship (which 
last is also an integral part of Confucianism) a widespread, 
debased, and idolatrous Buddhism, and the magical practices 
to which Taoism has degenerated. These religions, satisfy- 

truth. Von Strauss's description of Chinese Theism on p. xxvi of Allen's 
translation of the ' Book of Chinese Poetry ' seems to me to be a devout 
imagination. 

1 These beliefs are probably a survival of the primitive and prehistoric 
religion of China, which, Tiele holds, was a purified and organised worship of 
spirits, including the spirits of the dead. The spirits to be worshipped were 
without number. They reside in visible objects, and also assume the form of 
animals. A popular religion of this sort might easily run parallel with the 
higher and better tradition represented by Confucianism, and, as a matter of 
fact, it does so. The popular necessities have also found satisfaction in Bud- 
dhism and Taoism, neither of which excludes the State religion. Even in tlie 
State religion there is a curious mixture of pure Confucianism with nature- 
worship and the worship of certain recognised gods. 

8 



114 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

ing, as they do, by means of idols and communication with 
the unseen world, the need of man for an ever-present power 
interested and concerned in his destiny, are found to be 
compatible with a belief in the governing intellectual theory 
of life and society. 

It is not to be supposed that the ordinary Chinaman is a 
Buddhist in the monastic sense. This philosophy of religious 
ecstatic atheism is reserved for a few in those sequestered 
monasteries and temples, where, in disdain of hfe, they 
endeavour, by endless repetitions of liturgical pieces and a 
strenuous thinking of Nothing, to realise a condition which is 
neither life nor death, in the hope of ultimately attaining the 
nothingness of Nirvana. The common man worships in the 
numerous temples the goddess of mercy and many idols 
besides, including the idols of the past and the present, hop- 
ing through their aid and by works of merit to secure for 
himself happy transmigrations, if nothing more. 

The genuine Confucian Chinese believe that convulsions of 
nature, epidemics, &c., are indications of something wrong in 
the administration of government; but this not from any 
belief that providence interferes to punish but purely from 
the conviction that a disturbance of the natural order is 
indicative of a disturbance in the social order.^ 

Man, they hold, stands in the midst between heaven and 
earth to preserve the equipoise of the whole and to bear the 
burden of the moral world-order. By keeping the middle or 
mean himself, he can alone succeed in discharging his world 
functions. This religion of the more educated classes has 
formed the character of the people. To take care that this 
right mean is observed is the grand duty of the emperor, the 
great son of heaven, the god on earth who as father of his 
people, not as a despot, orders and governs all human institu- 

1 Althougli it is true that there is no State priesthood, there are yet ' pro- 
fessors of ceremonies ' appointed and paid by the State to regulate public 
ceremonial acts of worship, &c. Many such men also are employed by the 
people on all important ceremonial occasions, that everything may be done in 
order. They live by fees. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 115 

tions by means of laws which bear on every department and 
act of Hfe ; and he is aided by a graded and countless num- 
ber of subordinate administrators. 

We see in all races that the higher form of their religion 
is quite compatible with a worship of gods, demons, and 
spirits, also with what might be called subordinate religious 
beliefs which are considered not to conflict with the govern- 
ing system. These are, doubtless, survivals of more bar- 
barous times. This compatibility of the higher with the 
lower is specially characteristic of the Chinese. But what- 
ever may be the private superstitions of the people, this is 
certain, that it is Confucianism which is the State church, 
and that the whole life of the Chinese is not only influenced 
but controlled by Confucian ideas. One result is that gods 
and ancestors are worshipped with a view to material security 
alone, and that there is no ideal of life possible higher than 
prosaic prudential Confucianism. 

Let us now endeavour to bring together the governing 
conceptions which seem to constitute the motive-forces of 
Chinese life. 

CHAP. III. THE DOMINANT IDEAS OF CHINESE LIFE 

(1) The brief survey which we have given justifies us, I 
think, in concluding that the idea of Order as established 
and maintained by a Supreme Principle or Mind, is the foun- 
dation of all Chinese thought and life ; and if we realise to 
ourselves the influence which a conception so barren and 
cold must exercise on political doctrines and social customs, 
we have made one step towards the understanding of this 
remarkable people. 

(2) The next idea animating these masses of men is that 
of reverence for the past, which exhibits itself in two forms, 
a superstitious regard for all past thought, and a reverence 
for ancestors which takes the form of worship. Antiquity 
is in fact the guarantee for truth — constitutes in itself an 
infallible guide. Even the members of the Han-lin or Im- 



116 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

perial Academy, comprising the select men of the empire 
and residing at Peking, ' do nothing to extend the bounda- 
ries of human knowledge, simply because they are not aware 
that after the achievements of Confucius and the ancient 
sages any new world remains to be conquered.' (Martin, 
p. 24.) 

(3) In a nation in which the idea of the world-order 
seems to have first found expression in the sanctity of the 
family relationship, family life, as the centre of all social 
order and civic union, is held in the highest veneration. The 
father has absolute power over his children, and the children 
must render unquestioning obedience. The family, indeed, 
is the centre of the moral, as well as the social and political, 
life of the nation. Out of it, all virtues grow, and on it the 
idea of the State is supposed to be modelled. The State is 
only a largely developed family. The emperor is the head 
of this large family of officials and of citizens, and having, 
like a father, the power of life and death, commands and 
receives absolute obedience. Marriage, as might readily be 
supposed, is held to be a sacred institution, and a civil duty 
imposed on every man. (Concubines are allowed, but their 
children have not the same family privileges as those of the 
legitimate wife.) The relation of the wife to the husband 
is that of practical slavery.^ The family idea is, of course, 
sustained and intensified by the worship of ancestors. There 
seems, however, to be an element of fear in this quite as 
much as of respect or affection. The dead spirits may 
exercise a hurtful influence on their descendants if they are 
neglected. They are supposed to continue their interest in 
the affairs of their families, and may even be reborn into 
them. The Chinaman as a member of a family is thus in 



1 Even at birth the inferiority of the woman to the man is signalised. 
When a boy is born, a bow and arrow are hung before the door and he is 
wrapt in the finest clothes that can be had ; when a girl is born, the spindle 
and yarn are hung up, and any old rags are considered good enough for 
her. If a father is asked how many children he has, he counts only his 
sons. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 117 

close union with the past and future of his race, as well as 
with the present.^ 

(4) Prudential virtue usurps the place of the ideal and 
spiritual in the Chinese mind. The family idea, as may be 
easily understood, enters into and powerfully influences the 
system of morality. For, defective as some of the family 
relations are, the family bond is intensely strong, and the 
sentiment of the people gathers round the nearest and dearest 
relations of life, and does not much extend to spheres beyond. 
Thus it is said : ' If a man will attain to the completed per- 
fection of his nature, he must begin with the five relations 
of human society — 1-^ing and subject, father and son, elder 
and younger brother, husband, wife, friends — and practise 
the usual daily virtues. When the customary and easy 
virtues are neglected there is no possibility of attaining to 
the completed perfection of our nature.' 

No exception can be taken to the moral teaching of the 
authoritative books. ' Heaven produces all men, and points 
out for them their duties, for the fulfilment of which also it 
gives them the means.' Again : ' He who renders obedience 
to heaven will be sustained : he, on the other hand, who 
resists heaven will perish.' Beasts have no spirit or mind 
we are also told : man alone has spirit. ' All men,' says 
Mencius, ' have a compassionate heart ; all men have a heart 
which is ashamed of vice ; all men have a heart naturally 

1 Tablets, almost always pieces of wood, four to seven by two to three 
inches, are fixed into niches in tlie wall of a room. The name of the father 
is carved or painted on them, and to this the assembled family offer incense, 
and on great occasions sacrifice food of various kinds. Other tablets of more 
remote ancestors are similarly preserved and worshipped. Wealthy families, 
who have large connections, erect ancestral halls, in which ancestral tablets 
are placed, and to which at stated times worship and sacrifice are offered. 
This illustrates well the intensity of the family idea. The worship of ances- 
tors can only lie conducted by the males (females may marry into other 
families and cannot be depended on). Hence, partly, the superiority of boys 
to girls. A man who has no boy adopts one rather than run the risk of hav- 
ing himself and his ancestors neglected — a fate which seems to involve 
absolute death or annihilation, and which is escaped as long as they are 
worshipped. 



118 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

disposed to pay respect and reverence ; aU men have a heart 
which can distinguish between right and wrong: these 
virtues do not come from without, they are an essential part 
of our constitution.' ' If a man uses his understanding he 
win find the right way : if a man does not use liis under- 
standing he will not find it. Let no one be afflicted because 
of his want of strength ; the fault lies in failure to practise.' 
These moral propositions and many others are not allowed 
to rest in the sacred books and the commentaries on them, 
and be read when and where the people choose ; they are 
thoroughly mastered and, to a great extent, learnt by heart 
in all schools, and by aU candidates for the public service. 
They constitute the national creed and the national con- 
science. They have been the means of creating, and sustain- 
ing for probably 4,000 years, a fairly efficient social system. 

(5) A love of formalism is strong in the Chinese mind. 
This is very prominent in the mass of ritual ceremonies in 
which the moral and social life of the Chinese is enveloped. 
The Book of Eites is one of the sacred books, and contains 
directions for the acts of daily life in the family and in the 
State, and is also a manual of etiquette. All this is carefully 
mastered by those who affect to be educated. There can be 
little doubt that forms and ceremonies tend to give perma- 
nence to institutions, while they at the same time tend to 
deprive them of true vitality. Hence, partly, the stereotyped 
civilisation of China ; practical virtue becomes almost iden- 
tical with 'propriety' and convention. 

As an explanation of the remarkable permanence of 
Chinese life and polity we may point to the conservative 
character of the dominant ideas and to the influence of an 
ideographic language in restricting the free play of mind. 
It may also be held that the longer the period during which 
the same ' set ' of mind, the same habit of thought and 
action, continues in a nation, the more certain becomes the 
tendency to repetition, unless some very powerful force 
intervene. This doctrine of heredity in nations must never 
be lost sight of. Again, it may be said that a nation so 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 119 

large, if it once becomes the victim of a system, tends to 
perpetuate itself in the future as it has been in the past, 
because the dead weight of the whole is so great as to repress 
the parts. This specially happens where the political form 
of life is a highly centralised form : and a large empire is 
necessarily centralised where it is not a mere federation. 
Further, it is to be noted that the Chinese have been so 
placed geographically as to be cut off from intercommunica- 
tion with the rest of the world. The wonderful variety of 
their climate and productions, moreover, has not made such 
communication necessary. In so far as they have had inter- 
course, it has been of a kind to drive them back on their own 
national life, to hug (so to speak) their own form of civilisa- 
tion. It is on the west and north that they had in old times 
intercourse with others : this intercourse was of a very 
unpleasant kind, and led, in fact, to their building the Great 
Wall. 

All these elements furnish, it seems to me, subsidiary 
explanations of the prosaic continuity of the Chinese life. 
However it may be, there can be no doubt that the supreme 
rule of life among the Chinese is ' Walk in the trodden 
paths,' that their philosophy of religion necessarily points 
to a first principle of world-order, and presumes a Deity to 
be invoked and thanked, but not propitiated and influenced 
— a cosmic machine remote from and indifferent to man ; 
that their morality is a shrewd dogmatism, traditionary and 
preceptive, not reasoned ; and that their complicated ceremo- 
nial is the outer garment of a fixed and imperious social 
and political system. Everything thus tends to fixedness 
and order, to a statical rather than a dynamical social and 
civil life. 

I am perfectly well aware that, if we take a period of 4,000 
years, China has passed through many changes and has not 
been unprogressive in politics or the arts. It is also true 
that in ethics one or two sages have reached a higher level 
than the traditionary creed. But one swallow does not 
make a summer ; and, taking China from the time of Con- 



120 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

fucius onwards, I fail to see any signs of progress in the 
essential thought and life-standard of the nation. The grad- 
ual development of the educational machinery will be 
adverted to below. It appears to me, surveying the history 
of nations, that there is a vital connection between constitu- 
tional freedom and movement: whether that movement be 
progressive or retrogressive is another question. 

It is quite conceivable, however, that, spite of the potent 
ideas which underlie and sustain the vast network of admin- 
istration and its centralisation in an emperor, the unwieldy 
social system might break up under a heavy strain and per- 
haps revert to anarchy, were it not for two things : first, the 
universal self-centredness and self-government of the family 
and the consequent restricted view of life and its possibili- 
ties ; and, secondly, the educational system which carefully 
trains the people in the way they should go, and which pro- 
vides a governing aristocracy of intellect that commands the 
respect of the masses, while opening out a career to all who 
have the capacity to enter on it. 

CHAP. IV. THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

' Employ the able and promote the worthy.' — Old Chinese Maxim 

1. Its general cJiarader and aim 

Let us now summarise the chief governing principles of 
Chinese life. (1) The idea of order and static equilibrium. 
(2) The idea of the family as sacred and inviolable, and 
in connection with this of social duties as constituting the 
sum of morality — a system preceptive, prosaic, and desti- 
tute of all idealism. (3) The worship of ancestors, and, 
as inherent in this, a profound reverence for the past system 
of things. (4) An elaborate ceremonial (a kind of ritual of 
social life) as tending to confirm and perpetuate the first 
and second, and, in fact, essential to that end. The word 
' propriety ' seems to sum up the externalities of the moral 
relation and, in fact, to be almost synonymous with moral- 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 121 

ity itself. All these governing principles, it is evident, are 
intensely conservative in their character and effect. 

Now, the object of the Chinese government in construct- 
ing its educational macliinery was, doubtless, to preserve all 
these characteristics : but they had also in view the welding 
together of the vast and varied mass of population in one 
common interest, thereby satisfying the democratic instinct 
under an absolute imperial system. While the chief object 
of all learning in China is, as I have said, the art of govern- 
ment and the art of life, it has to be admitted that a sub- 
ordinate object with many of the emperors has also been 
the cultivation of literary attainment for its own sake. 

To accomphsh their educational purposes the Chinese 
did not institute schools. A State system of schools and 
colleges diffused among 400,000,000 (?) of people would 
have been a mighty administrative task. The governing 
authorities thought that enough was done if they encour- 
aged education by confining the whole civil service of the 
country, and indeed all positions of honour, to those highly 
educated. The old feudalism had given place to the practical 
equality of each citizen under the emperor, and government 
henceforth was to be through literate, not hereditary, chiefs. 

The state contented itself, accordingly, with instituting 
a board of examiners, the controllers of which were the 
Han-lin or Academicians of Peking — an order of distinc- 
tion and power, into which only the most learned could 
hope for admission. The board organised periodical exam- 
inations of all who chose to present themselves ; and only 
the sons of barbers and players, and one or two other classes, 
were to be excluded from competition. 

The present system was fully organised only a.d. 700 
(Morrison) ; but from the time of Confucius education was 
general throughout China. Nay, long before his time there 
were schools, and education held a high place in the esteem 
of all the thoughtful and governing men. (Plath, ' Ueber 
Schulunterricht und Erziehung bei den alteu Chinesen,' 1868.) 
Biot gives an historical account of the fluctuations of the 



122 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

educational system of China. From this account we learn 
that the Chinese from the earliest times, certainly from nearly 
2,000 years B.C., attached the highest value to school educa- 
tion. Colleges and schools were the care of the governing 
powers ; and to these (Professor Legge says) the sons of the 
feudal lords were sent. It was at a period of degeneracy that 
Confucius wrote. His aim, and that of his followers, was to 
substitute personal merit for hereditary claims to office, and 
to throw open all administrative positions to those who could 
win them in open intellectual competition. This was a 
democratic movement. The competitive system may be said 
to date from the second century B.C. (p. 127, Biot), but it had 
varying fortunes before it was finally organised 800 years 
thereafter. It appears from old laws that the ruling dynasty 
of Manchu was not at first favourable to the literary hierarchy. 
So recently as 1726, indeed, the emperor stopped the ex- 
aminations, because he said two of the literati had slandered 
him ; and in an edict passed on that occasion, he pointed out 
that the object of government in supporting the literati was, 
not to elicit 'skill in letters, but to teach the people to 
recognise and obey their princes and fathers.' 

The following brief survey of the history of examinations 
in China is, I believe, substantially correct : — 'So early as at 
the commencement of the Chow dynasty, B.C. 1115, the gov- 
ernment was accustomed to examine candidates for offices ; 
and this time we are not left in doubt as to tlie nature of the 
examination. The Chinese had become a cultivated people, 
and we are informed that all candidates for office were re- 
quired to give proof of their acquaintance with the fine arts, 
viz. music, archery, horsemanship, writing and arithmetic, 
and to be thoroughly versed in the rites and ceremonies of 
public and social life, an accomplishment that ranked as a 
sixth art. These six arts, expressed in the concise formula, 
li, yo, shay, yu, shu, su, comprehended the sum total of a 
liberal education at the period, and remind us of the trivium 
and quadrivium of mediaeval schools. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 123 

'Under the dynasty of Han, after the lapse of another 
thousand (900 ? ) years, we find the range of subjects for the 
civil service examinations largely extended. The Confucian 
ethics had become current, and a moral standard was regarded 
in the selection of the competitors, the district magistrate 
being required to send up to the capital such men as had 
acquired a reputation for hiao and lien — filial piety and 
integrity — the Chinese rightly considering that the faithful 
performance of domestic and social duties is the best guaran- 
tee for fidehty in public life. These Mao-lien, these "filial 
sons and honest subjects," whose moral characters had been 
sufficiently attested, were now subjected to trial in respect to 
their intellectual qualifications. The trial was twofold, first 
as to their skill in the six arts already mentioned, and 
secondly as to their familiarity with one or more of the 
following subjects, the civil law, military affairs, agriculture, 
the administration of the revenue, and the geography of the 
empire, with special reference to the state of the water com- 
munications. This was an immense advance on the meagre 
requirements of the more ancient dynasties. 

' Passing over another thousand (900 ? ) years, we come to 
the era of the Tangs and the Sungs, about 700 a.d., when we 
find the standard of literary attainment greatly elevated, the 
graduates arranged in three classes and officials in nine, a 
classification which is still retained. 

' Arriving at the close of the fourth millennium, under the 
sway of the Mings and Tsings of the present day, we find 
the simple trials instituted by Shun expanded into a colossal 
system which may well claim to be the growth of four thou- 
sand years. It still exhibits the features that were prominent 
in its earlier stages, the " six arts," the " five studies " and the 
" three degrees " remaining as records of its progressive 
development. 

' Scholarship is a very different thing now from what it 
was in those ruder ages when books were few, and the harp, 
the bow, and the saddle divided the student's time with the 



124 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

oral instructions of some famous master. Each century has 
added to the weight of his burden, and to the " heir of all the 
ages" each passing generation has bequeathed a legacy of 
toil. Doomed to live among the deposits of a buried world, 
and contending with miUions of competitors, the intending 
candidate can hardly hope for success without devoting him- 
self to a life of unremitting study. True, he is not called 
upon to extend his researches beyond the limits of his 
national literature, but that is all but infinite. It costs him, 
at the outset, years of labour to get possession of the key 
that unlocks it, for the learned language is totally distinct 
from his vernacular dialect, and justly regarded as the most 
difficult of the languages of man. Then he must commit to 
memory the whole circle of the recognised classics and make 
himself familiar with the best writers of every age of a coun- 
try which is no less prolific in books than in men. No 
doubt, his course of study is too purely literary and too 
exclusively Chinese, but it is not superficial. In a popular 
" Student's Guide " we lately met with a course of reading 
drawn up for thirty years ! ' ^ 

The competition is so close that it is impossible for those 
under preparation to study any subject except that which the 
State prescribes. 

While it is generally correct to say that all State offices 
are reserved for those who go through the complete Chinese 
curriculum and pass the examinations, it has to be noted 
that there is at Peking a State-supported college for the 
special instruction of the sons of high officials and of the 
Manchu governing and military class, and that the pupils of 
this mstitution are afterwards employed in the public ser- 
vice. Dr. Momson says that the examination of members of 
the imperial dynasty is a mockery. 

It sometimes happens also that for eminent social position 
or public services, a high degree and corresponding rank may 

^ From Han Lin Papers ; or, Essays on the Intellectual Life of the Chinese, 
pp. 56-9, by W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL.D., President of the Sungwen 
College, Peking. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 125 

be conferred, although the recipient is not a literate. Pro- 
fessor Douglas says that there is a large number of mandarins 
of different grades who have received their titles for public 
services. 

Mr. Wells WUliams ^ maintains that the examinations are 
not always purely conducted, and that bribes are frequently 
conveyed by wealthy candidates to the examiners. The 
lowest degree, especially, is frequently obtained by influence. 
There can be no doubt of this. Even the second degree is 
sometimes obtained by bribery, and the smuggling of essays 
into the examination halls connived at. Indeed, there is a 
regular scale of charges for successful fraudulent assistance 
or personation.2 

For the examinations which are graded, and which I shall 
immediately describe, the people prepare themselves. It 
would appear, however, that government public schools ex- 
isted nearly 4,000 years ago, for in the Book of Eites it is 
said that ' for the purposes of education among the ancients, 
villages had their schools, districts their academies, depart- 
ments their colleges, and principalities their universities.' ^ 
Schools are set up by adventure teachers in every part of 
China proper, many families, however, preferring to employ 
private tutors. M. Simon, in a recent book, tells us that col- 
leges under the direction of the central academy still exist, 
but the people do not seem to take advantage of them. The 
Chinese young man prefers coaching establishments to edu- 
cational institutions ; and, where a master has gained a 
reputation for skill in teaching, many pupils gather round 
him to prepare for examination. Such private colleges are 
numerous. Nor are the public colleges so deserted as M. 
Simon represents, if we are to believe others. The teachers 
of these are paid by the State, and admission to training is 
by competitive examination. Thus men and boys who are 
too poor to pay for their education have a chance afforded 
them (Doolittle). 

1 The Middle Kingdom. 2 Doolittle. 

3 Quoted by Mr. Williams, i. 421. 



126 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Education in any form whatsoever cannot be said to reach 
the lowest stratum of the population. But, on the other 
hand, it is certain that all have the opportunity (if they 
have the pecuniary means) of acquiring the knowledge 
requisite for the State examinations. 

Given the stimulus in the shape of the wealth and rank 
of official station, the practical results in China appear to be, 
that the people find they can educate themselves better than 
the government can educate them. Mr. Meadows holds 
that the institution of public service examinations (which 
have been always strictly competitive) is the cause of the 
continued duration of the Chinese nation ; it is that which 
preserves the other causes and gives efficacy to their opera- 
tion. By it all parents throughout the country who can 
compass the means of imparting to their sons a knowledge 
of their country's literature do so. A most important result 
is this, that the poorest man in China is constrained to say, 
if his lot in life be lowly, that it is so by the 'will of 
heaven,' and not through any unjust barriers or disqualifi- 
cations erected by his fellow-men. 

2. Tlie external organisation of the examination-system 

The so-called districts of China are about the size of an 
average English county. These are presided over by a civil 
mandarin. He is assisted by subordinate mandarins, among 
whom are two educational mandarins. 

Several districts together are grouped as departments (the 
average being six districts to a department), at the head of 
which is the departmental judge or prefect, and his resi- 
dence is known as the departmental city. These depart- 
ments again are grouped — usually three of them — into 
circuits, at the head of which is a high officer called inten- 
dant (Taou-tae) — the lowest official who has power over 
the action of the military. 

The officials above-named are all distributed through the 
provinces, and at the head of each province is a viceroy. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 127 

The viceroy is not only at the head of the civil adminis- 
tration of the province, but also controls the miUtary, and 
has a general supervision. In fact, the provinces are vir- 
tually self-governing, but subject to the supreme imperial 
authority.^ The viceroy is empowered to communicate 
with the emperor and the cabinet council direct, and he 
has the power of suspending all the mandarins in the cir- 
cuits, departments, and districts of his province. Under 
this powerful viceroy there are three high officials : the 
finance superintendent, the judicial head or chief justice, 
and the provincial educational examiner. There are thus 
(1), districts ; (2), departments ; (3), circuits ; (4), pro- 
vinces ; all under the emperor and his cabinet council. 

The system of examination runs parallel, to a large extent, 
with the civil divisions of the country ; and at the head of 
the whole educational administration is the Academy of 
Han-lin at Peking, to which I have already adverted. ' It 
numbers,' says M. Simon, ' 232 members recruited by them- 
selves from among the literati. The State guarantees to 
each of them the use of a house and garden, with a small 
money allowance.' There are also ancient endowments. 
'Jt is entirely independent of the government, in spite of 
the assistance rendered, which cannot be withdrawn.' Not 
only does this Academy control the educational examina- 
tions of the country, but it is virtually a kind of privy 
council advising the emperor. Forty of their number con- 
stitute a court of censors and supervise (Simon) both the 
public and private life of the emperor. Fifty-six censors 
also are distributed through the country, says Douglas. 
They are understood to expose all cases of maladministra- 
tion. Members of the court are also sent on special mis- 
sions to inquire into grievances, &c. Others have the charge 
of the public records. 

1 The provincial cities may have a population of from 500,000 to 3,000,000 
people. 



128 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

3. The examinations ^ 

(1) Preliminary examinations are conducted in tlie dis- 
tricts or counties by the educational mandarins. These 
* preliminaries ' are two in number (Plath). 

(2) Those who pass the preliminary examinations then go 
forward to an examination held twice every three years iu 
the departmental city. This departmental examination is 
conducted by the provi7icial examiner, who goes to the 
departmental city for that purpose and is aided by the 
departmental prefect. The candidates make their appear- 
ance twice or oftener for examination, and those who stand 
a fair chance of the degree are then required to appear and 
write out from memory the whole of the Sacred Edict, a 
treatise prepared by one of the emperors for the instruction 
of his subjects in their moral duties (Doolittle). Failure in 
this is fatal to a candidate's chance, however high he may 
stand in the other exercises. This departmental examina- 
tion is the last of the primary examinations and confers on 
those who pass it the designation of Sew-tzai,^ 'flowering 
talent,' which Europeans have translated as the degree of 
Bachelor.^ The successful Bachelor can wear a button on 
his cap and is raised above the common citizen. In fact he 
is now subject, even in the case of criminal offences, to the 
literary chief of the graduates of his district (Doolittle). 
This might be regarded as being admitted ' to the benefit of 
clergy.' He now belongs to the lowest grade of Chinese 
ai'istocracy. But only a fixed number receive the degree at 
each examination, and consequently youths often go back to 
their homes without public recognition of their attainments, 
although in reality standing high. It is thus in the strictest 

1 I have carefully read at least seven or eight accounts of the exarniuatious, 
and all differ iu their details somewhat. I give the result of a careful 
collation. 

2 Spelt sometimes siu-ts-ai. 

3 According to Doolittle, there are also certain intermediate or supple- 
mentary examinations of Bachelors, to weed out those who are not fit to go 
forward to the second degree. 



THE URO- ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 129 

sense a competition. Those who pass the examination are 
received with great rejoicings by their friends. I have 
already said that this B.A. is sometimes purchased, and 
often obtained by bribery. Of this there can be no doubt. 
According to Doolittle, it can be bought from the Imperial 
authority itself. The purchaser can then compete for the 
next higher degree. In any case, he has received a distinc- 
tion of great social value. 

(3) Every three years the Bachelors of each province have 
an opportunity of being examined at the provincial city at a 
great gathering presided over by two examiners sent from 
Peking, who are assisted by a large local staff. These ex- 
aminations extend over three sittings. Although the average 
number allowed to pass in each province is only seventy 
(Martin gives one in a hundred), the competitions are fre- 
quently attended by from 7,000 to 8,000 Bachelors. There 
may be in a provincial hall as many as 10,000 examination 
cells : small and uncomfortable recesses. The candidates 
take in their own provisions (the State allowance being 
bad), and there are servants appointed to cook for them. 
Two days and nights seems to be the minimum amount of 
time spent in the examination hall. Martin gives three ses- 
sions of nearly three days each. Compositions in prose and 
verse are prescribed, and themes to test the extent and depth 
of scholarship. Those who pass are designated ' promoted 
men,' Chii-jin, which in Europe has been translated ' Licen- 
tiates,' or ' Masters.' They can now adorn their caps with a 
gilt button of a higher grade. 

(4) The Licentiates or Masters are now entitled to com- 
pete for the metropolitan title of ' entered scholars,' or (as 
we have translated the degree) Doctor (Chin-tze) which is 
conferred after a severe examination at Peking, the capital, 
held triennially and conducted by the metropolitan Acade- 
micians, members of the Han-liu. It lasts thirteen days 
(Plath) ; but the percentage of elected men is now larger 
than in the lower examinations. 

The mere details of working so huge an examination 

9 



130 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

machine are enough to overwhelm the ordinary European 
mind — officers to marshal the students before entering the 
examination hall ; officers to paste down the corners of the 
themes on which is the number corresponding to the candi- 
date's name ; servitors to wait on the candidates ; examiners 
and their numerous assistants. 

The Bachelor's examination occupies only one day, the 
candidates assembling before dawn, and being provided with 
slate and paper. Though searched before entering they not 
unfrequently, it is said, find means of eluding their searchers, 
and instead of having the ' Four Books ' at their fingers' ends 
have them, in the form of diamond editions, concealed up 
their flowing sleeves. As soon as it is light enough, two 
themes for prose essays and one for a poem are carried round 
on long poles and are copied down by all.^ Then ensues 
a struggle as to who shall finish first, a certain proportion of 
marks being allowed for speed in composition, and by 
degrees all the papers are handed in and the candidates dis- 
perse. Some few days afterwards the list is issued. 

Dr. Morrison summarises thus, in speaking of the Licen- 
tiate's examination. First day : three themes from the Four 
Books, one for a verse composition. Second day : one theme 
from each of the Five Classics ; one of these, according 
to most writers, being a verse composition. Third day : five 
questions on the history and economics of China. The 
theme-paper is printed with perpendicular and horizontal 
lines, dividing it into squares, one. square for each character. 
Characters blotted out or altered must be numbered and 
noted down by the student according to a prescribed form. 
The number of characters for each essay is prescribed. It 
will not be accepted if there are any heterodox opinions. 

In a great centre like Canton there will be found as many 
as 10,000 persons within the enclosure of the examination 
building, and the public interest is intense. 

For the military service a very small knowledge of liter- 

1 Bishop Gray gives several days to this examination. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 131 

ature is needed. The special examination consists of 
physical exercises — the lifting of heavy weights, drawing 
the long bow, and drill with the sword. 

4. Rewards of success in the examinations 

It is a joyful moment for those who find themselves 
in possession of the first literary degree — a degree which 
launches its owner fairly in a recognised career, entitles him 
to wear official dress with a gilt button of the lowest grade, 
and exempts him, as a prisoner or as a witness, from the 
indignity of the bamboo — at any rate, until his case shall 
have been reported to the higher authorities and his diploma 
cancelled. From this moment he is nominally an officer 
of the State, though doomed to remain for some time, and 
possibly for ever, in the position of an unemployed and 
unpaid attach^. He is, however, whatever may happen, a 
member of the Chinese aristocracy. His own energy and 
abilities must determine the rest. He may now either 
obtain by purchase (not from the State but from the man- 
darin in whose office the particular patronage is vested) or 
by influence, subordinate employment as secretary, clerk, &c. 
in some department of the provincial administration, and 
trust to chance to work his way in the world : or he may 
become a scribe or a teacher. 

Wliile Bachelors have no right to expect office, the 
Licentiate may expect a post after waiting for one or two 
years ; but much depends on personal influence at this stage. 
The Doctor has, however, claim to a district magistracy at 
once, and the career of civilian in all its grades is opened up 
to him. Mr. Williams says (ed. 1857) that in his time, 
partly in consequence of the extensive sale of offices, 5,000 
Doctors and 27,000 Licentiates were waiting for employment. 
In any other country save China tliese men would be a 
serious element of danger to the State. 

* Hard and successful study,' says Mr. Meadows, ' alone 
enables a Chinese to set foot on the lowest step of the 



132 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

ojB&cial ladder, and a long and unusually successful career is 
necessary to enable him to reach the higher rounds ' ; 
and we may add, in the words of this same author, that ' the 
administrative system into which learning thus secures an 
access is the most gigantic and the most minutely organised 
which the world has ever seen.' 

It has to be noted that the specialised liberal professions as 
we understand them, do not exist in China, ' and a youth in 
determining his calling in life has to choose between becoming 
a scholar and a possible mandarin or teacher, and taking to 
trade. This narrowing of future possibilities induces almost 
every lad who possesses any talent whatever to throw in his 
lot with the students. And this point being decided, he 
devotes himself with all the industry of his race to preparing 
for the public examinations by perfecting his knowledge of 
the classics and by practising the art of writing essays and 
penning verses.' (Douglas, p. 165.) 

The few more distinguished Doctors may go forward to 
still another and final examination which makes them mem- 
bers of the Imperial Academy attached to the court at 
Peking, which is entrusted with the function of poets and 
historians of the empire, and the supervision of the State 
examinations. At each triennial examination the emperor 
designates the one consummate flower of the triennium, the 
' Senior Wrangler ' (as they would say at Cambridge) of the 
empire, and the city which has produced him becomes noted 
in the eyes of all China. 

To what end all this ? Not to promote philosophical 
speculation, scientific investigation, or even literary excel- 
lence, but merely with a view to ascertain fitness for the 
public service by testing the acquisitive, retentive, and 
reproductive powers of the candidates. Any originality 
would be fatal to the aspirant. We cannot shut our eyes 
to the barren result of all this hard study and excessive 
examination. The exclusiveness with which the Chinese 
minds are fed on the facts and bald precepts of history, on 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 133 

the poetical literature (mostly lyric and artificial) of the 
past, and the demand made on them for an exact reproduc- 
tion of the words of their sacred books and the classical 
writers and commentators on them, has a tendency to con- 
firm and perpetuate the Chinese peculiarities of mind, and 
to repress all true progressive intellectual life. 

At the same time such a system manifestly has high politi- 
cal significance. The intellect of the whole empire is, so to 
speak, captured and enslaved not merely to the learning of 
the past but to the existing constitution of things. A system 
which gives every man, who can attain even to the lowest 
degree, a social status and the prospect of professional work 
of some kind, can be upset only by some extraordinary social 
upheaval. An aristocracy of intellect is in its essence a 
democratic institution, and from the point of view of the 
emperor and his cabinet, a very safe one. The system, more- 
over, while producing men attached to the institutions by 
which they have risen, acts as a check on the arbitrariness 
of despotism. The emperor must so conduct himself as to 
satisfy the conceptions of moral conduct and political justice 
which the highest intellect of the country has formed and 
formulated. 

Great are the privileges, we see, belonging to those who 
have an opportunity of obtaining education, but it is impossi- 
ble that education in any sense can reach the masses of the 
people. Time and money are needed to take advantage of 
the education offered. Nor, indeed, would it seem possible to 
give what we in the West call popular education save through 
the local dialects, in which there is little or no native litera- 
ture. The literary language is as far removed from these dia- 
lects as Latin is from broad Scots. 

5. Subjects of examination 

To these I have already adverted. They are clearly defined, 
and it is impossible for any one who means to succeed, to 
allow his attention to be for a moment directed from the pre- 



134 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

scribed path. And yet, from the Chinese point of view the 
course of study is comprehensive. Biot correctly says that the 
competitive examinations are on principle founded on the 
reading and explanation of a limited number of ancient texts, 
and so far it is rightly called ' literary.' But it has also an 
intellectual character resulting from the fact that these texts 
contain all the essential documents of morahty, philosophy, 
politics and history — the ensemble of rights and duties. The 
Five Classics and Four Books do not amount in bulk to more 
than our Old and New Testaments together. 

But commentators have also to be studied, and these have 
produced works of inordinate dimensions. ' Century after 
century,' says Professor Douglas,^ ' has produced scholars who 
have devoted their lives to the production of exegetical trea- 
tises which since, as every grain of wheat has been long well 
threshed out of the texts, have degenerated into trivial and 
verbal technicalities.' 

6. Teachers : Schools : Course of Shidy : Methods 

(a) Teachers and Schools. — The schoolmaster has 
not to pass an examination and requires no permit from the 
authorities, but I believe that the educational inspectors are 
empowered, if they see fit, to close bad schools. Parents 
choose for their children the teacher in whom they have con- 
fidence and they exercise the greatest care in doing so. The 
teachers are mostly Bachelors in arts who have not proceeded 
to a higher degree, frequently men who have failed in the 
competition for their bachelorship. But in the higher grades 
of teaching, even Doctors will be often found to prefer school- 
work to the public service. All instructors are much re- 
spected ; no function is more highly esteemed, save that of 
an administrator. They are engaged by the year. Their 
remuneration varies. In ' private ' schools they receive from 
S5l. to SOL per annum ; in country schools they are paid by 
the fees of the scholars, usually from 2s. to 4s. per month, 
besides presents and provisions. 

1 Society in China, p. 164. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 135 

The children of the towns and villages meet in some de- 
pendence of a pagoda or temple or of some large commercial 
establishment. Frequently mere sheds are used. It is rarely 
that a building specially designed for a schoolhouse is to be 
seen.^ The rooms are generally hired by the teacher : some- 
times he may have himself a house suitable for a school and 
receive the children there. Private schools got up by a few- 
well-to-do families for their own children, are kept in the 
halls dedicated to ancestors and are better provided than the 
public schools. It is private interest, not zeal for the eleva- 
tion of the people, that leads to the institution of schools ; 
but here and there schools have been set on foot by the per- 
sonal benefactions of some rich man who looks for his reward 
in some literary title. 

In village schools, the number of pupils under one teacher 
may be from 20 to 40. The school hours are usually from 
sunrise to 10 o'clock, when the children go home to dinner, 
and then from 11 to 5. The arrangements of the school are 
very simple. The teacher has a table and arm-chair for 
himself, and every scholar has to bring with him a writing- 
table and chair. Every one has to provide himself, also, 
with books, paper, Indian-ink and pencil. 

The boy enters school about the age of seven. The first 
going to school is a great occasion in the family. Admission 
into the school is accompanied by a formal ceremony under 
the name of Koi-hok, i.e., opening of studies. On first going 
to school the scliolar pays his devotions (which consist in 
burning of incense and genuflexions) before the altar of Con- 
fucius. If there is no altar, a bit of paper with Confucius's 
name on it will suffice (Doolittle). He next salutes his 
teacher with great reverence. The boy is now a disciple of 
Confucius and remains so till the day on which he takes his 
final degree. Every day, when the pupils come to school, 
they bow and offer incense to the picture of a god of knowl- 
edge,^ then bow to the teacher and take their places. Educa- 

1 Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom. 

2 One of these I possess, and it is a hideous object. 



136 PRE-CHRtSTIAN EDUCATION 

tion as well as instruction is understood to be comprised in 
the teacher's duties. Accordingly, he is required to train 
the pupils in good behaviour and convey to them the rules 
of decency and politeness, and, all through the school period, 
moral instruction and becoming conduct according to the 
rules of etiquette which regulate the relations of persons to 
each other in China are understood to be kept in view. In 
such matters nothing seems to be too minute for the Chinese 
mind. 

(6) The Course of Study. — The course of study is 
rigid and the same for all : nothing in the whole of the long 
curriculum is optional. 

Speaking generally, there are three grades of instruction 

— sometimes all within the same school. The primary, in 
which mere memory work is done, and script acquired ; the 
middle, in which a translation is given of the canonical 
books ; and the higher, in which composition and commen- 
taries are the leading studies. 

The first schoolbook is described as the ' Pass to the regions 
of classical and historical literature,' but this is not its name. 
It is sometimes called the * three-character classic ' — also 
the ' trimetrical classic' ^ It begins with the necessity of 
education. Then the importance of their duties to children 
and brothers is impressed upon the pupils by precept and 
example. Then follows a survey of the various branches of 
knowledge in an ascending series : the three great powers 
(heaven, earth, and man) ; the four seasons and quarters of 
heaven ; the five elements (metals, wood, fire, earth) ; the 
five cardinal virtues (love, justice, propriety, wisdom, truth 

— faithfulness) ; the six species of grain (rice, barley, wheat, 
beans, millet, and another kind of grain) ; the six domestic 
animals (horse, ox, sheep, fowl, dog, swine) ; the seven pas- 
sions (love, hatred, joy, sadness, pleasure, anger, and fear) ; 

1 Quoting from the Abbe Hiac, the Dictmmaire Pidagogique gives San-tze- 
kiiig as the Chinese title of this book. A copy before me, printed in Hong 
Kong, reads Sam- tsz- King. 



THE URO- ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 137 

the eight notes of music ; the nine degrees of relationship ; 
the social duties as between ruler and subject, father and 
son, husband and wife, elder and younger brother, and 
friends. After this survey come rules for a course of aca- 
demic studies with a list of the books to be used, and a 
general summary of the History of China with an enumera- 
tion of the successive dynasties of the empire.^ The material 
is too compressed and too generalised for the youthful mind 
to assimilate; but at this age no regard is paid to the 
development of the thinking powers. The pupils are to 
receive quite mechanically a store of valuable information, 
till the time comes when their intelligence will be awakened 
by the explanations of the teacher, and this happens only in 
the case of those who propose to go forward to the public 
degree examinations. The Primer — the contents of which 
I have just summarised — begins thus (Eitel's translation) : 

Man's commencement of life is such that his nature is radically good. 
But as to nature, men are mutually near each other 

Whilst in practice they are mutually far apart. 
Suppose, however, that no education were given to a man, 
His nature would then be diverted. 

Education's rationale is such in its tendency 

That the highest value is set on application. 

The next five lines are from Bridgman's translation : 

To educate without rigour shows a teacher's indolence. 

That boys should not learn is an improper thing ; 

For if they do not learn in youth, Avhat will they do when old 1 

Gems unwrought can form nothing useful ; 

So men untaught can never know the proprieties. 

Another extract, having reference to the books to be 
studied, may be given : 

Now in all cases when instruction is given to the ignorant, 
Although it is well to explain characters orally and exhaustively, 
Vet detailed moral instruction in the sayings of the ancients 

I See Eitel's translation, published at Hong Kong, 1892. 



138 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Is just as necessary as precision regarding syntactic punctuation. 
But as to [successful] practice of study, or rather that Avhich con- 
stitutes it, 
It is indispensable to have a rational basis to begin with. 
Starting therefore from a study of the filial piety classic. 
We proceed to the study of the so-called Four Books. 

And so on. 

The concluding words of the book are these : 

Whilst men leave behind them their sons, 
And with gold fill their coffers, 
I, Wong Poh-hen give an education to my sons, 
Leaving behind nought but this one little book. 

But diligence in the use of it will have its sure merits, 

Whilst play is of no benefit at all. 

Beware of that, do ! 

It is of imperative importance for you to exert all your strength. 

Observe the generalised and abstract character of the in- 
struction given to mere infants. When we note further that 
each notion is represented either by a distinct symbol, or a 
symbol with more than one interpretation, we shall be able 
to conceive the vast memory task which the Chinese chdd 
has to face on the very threshold of learning. M. Genahr (a 
missionary) affirms that a great many even of the teachers 
do not understand the meaning of what they teach children 
to read. 

The boy now knows the shapes and sounds of upwards of 
400 separate characters, representing upwards of 1,000 words, 
and is considered sufficiently advanced to take the second 
step upon the road to knowledge and to proceed to commit 
to memory in like manner the ' Thousand Character Book ' 
— Ts'in-Tsz-man. This singular piece of composition is said 
to have been the production of a man who was supplied in 
prison with 1,000 different characters jumbled together and 
to have been ordered to make out of them a poem.^ He 
accomplished the feat in a single night, but his hair turned 
1 Giles' Historic China. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 139 

white with the effort. This is legendary, of course. The 
poem consists of 250 columns of four characters to each. 
The subjects are varied, and rather inconsequent, as witness 
the following specimen which I take from the beginning of 
the book, as being the best part from a literary point of view 
and also the most consecutive: 

There is [father] Heaven above me and [mother] Earth below : 
how dusky the former, how tawny the latter ! 

And so there is the universe all around, with its aeons all along : 
how vast the former, how limitless the latter ! 

Then there is sun and moon : even as the latter goes ou to fulness, 
the former declines. 

And so there are the other planets, with all the stars : how scat- 
tered they are, and yet how orderly the display ! 

[Hence it is that nature makes] the cold to come on, even as the 
heat begins to depart, 

And as autumn gathers things up [into maturity], so winter again 
hides them all away, 

[And hence also] men forming into intercalary months the surplus 
[of their reckoning of days] have perfected [their calcula- 
tions] of the year. 

And likewise in music, having discovered the sharps and flats, they 
have reproduced [in melodies] in harmonies of nature's e:3c- 
panding [and reverting] breath. 

The book then goes on to treat of the beauty of natural 
objects, the origin and progress of Chinese civilisation, in- 
herited physical and mental constitution, moral self-culture, 
moral reputation, filial piety, political loyalty, value of literary 
studies, deportment, founders of Chinese polity, topography, 
value of agriculture, advice and warning, natural gifts and 
organised study, the flight of time, and concludes with a 
warning against isolation. 

Here again the chief object is to store the pupil's memory 
with the shapes and sounds of a large number of written 
symbols ; and by the time that the Thousand Character 
Essay (or poem) has been mastered, it follows that 1,000 ^ 

^ Unless the same characters frequently recur, which is probable. 



140 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

new characters will have been added to the boy's stock-in- 
trade ; besides which he ought to have acquired a knowledge 
of a very useful cardinal series of numbers from 1 to 1,000. 
But besides this, as the work is methodically constructed (a 
fact which puts out of court the legend of the prisoner), the 
children ought to have acquired a large amount of informa- 
tion on history, geography, morality, and the domestic virtues. 
I say ' ought to have acquired ' advisedly ; but they acquire 
nothing save the utterance of the literary words by rote, and 
the formation of the literary characters. No attempt is 
made to bring the intelligence to bear on the w^ork done. 
The object is simply to give the children a rote-knowledge of 
the words and forms of the literary language. Still a certain 
intellectual result must follow. 

If any one doubts the effect of school education on the 
character and life of a nation, let him consider with himself 
the respective influence of these Chinese classical primers so 
acquired, and the Shorter Catechism used as a school text- 
book and as constituting the rule of faith and life in 
Scotland. 

One writer says, with manifest truth, that the Chinese 
child is in a position similar to that in which an English 
child would be who had to learn by heart Latin Grammar 
and several Latin books without understanding a single 
word. Eote-work, and this in what is practically a foreign 
tongue, governs all.^ 

The next step is an important one, analogous to the old 
Grammar-school transition in learning Latin, viz. from the 
'Delectus' to Caesar and Virgil — from the elementary to 
the more advanced. The budding student now opens the 
first page of the Four Books, which are of vital importance 
in the great competitive tests to which he will hereafter be 
subjected. These Four Books, to which are added the Five 
Classics, are now committed, one by one, to memory, in pre- 
cisely the same way as the two foregoing schoolbooks, 
anything like explanation or consultation of the author- 

1 I have also seen a short book of poetry sometimes used in schools. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 141 

ised commentaries being postponed until some progress 
has been made in the arduous task of learning by heart. 
(Giles.) The master, it is true, now translates and the 
boys imitate him ; but there is no independent effort to 
get at the meaning. 

Then come the commentaries, as I have before explained. 
' The memory work is prodigious, and is abnormally devel- 
oped at the expense of all the higher mental faculties.' 
(Douglas, p. 165.) ' It is always easier to remember than to 
think, and according to the current Chinese system, it is also 
more profitable.' 

(c) Method of Instruction. Earlier stages. — There 
are several highly esteemed books on the subject of education 
in China, and they contain admirable maxims, but there has 
been no attempt to discover a method of training. The most 
celebrated perhaps is one called ' Complete Collection of 
Family Jewels,' in which there are also rules for school man- 
agement (Morrison). There is no class system. It _^is all 
individual teaching. 

The method of learning to read is the following. The 
book is opened and the teacher begins to read. The pupils, 
each of whom has his book, repeat the words after the master, 
with their eyes fixed on the page, and following the words 
with their fore-finger. Only one line is read, and this is 
repeated by the pupils simultaneously in a loud voice till the 
pupils have acquired the pronunciation of every symbol and 
can read the line without the master. Then they go to their 
seats and learn the line by heart ; this they also do with a 
loud voice, each one shouting out his task (the noise proceed- 
ing from a Chinese school is frightful), till he has imprinted 
it on his memory. When he is ready he goes to the master, 
puts his book on the table before him, turns his back and so 
repeats the lesson. Hence the phrase ' to back the book ' is 
equivalent to ' saying by heart.' Then the teacher proceeds 
to the next line, and goes on in the same way till the whole 
book is committed to memory. The book is rhythmically 
constructed, so that three symbols always form one sentence, 



142 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

and hence the name Sam-tz-King, or 'the trimetrical or 
three-character classic' We have here developed to its 
fullest extent the universal Oriental custom of learning by 
heart — a survival from the time when oral tradition was 
the only possible way of learning and teaching. Before books 
or rolls existed the teacher recited what the pupils were to 
learn, and they repeated it after him till they knew it. The 
understanding of what was acquired was not thought of, nor 
indeed was the instruction graduated so as to fit the intelli- 
gence of the young. The understanding of what was learned 
was allowed to take care of itself. China, although it has 
the printed page, is no exception to the crude Oriental con- 
ception of instructing the young. 

Besides the reading of the symbols, the only other subject 
taught in the elementary school is writing. The scholars 
receive a copy from the master, which contains in the first 
instance the simplest symbols, and they gradually learn to 
write those of more complex form. These copies are laid 
under the paper on which the pupil is to write, and are traced 
by him with the pencil. When he has obtained some facihty 
in tracing he begins to copy. 

Many boys who go to school never learn more than to 
read and write, and do not attain to an understanding of the 
characters ; so that even if one of them were capable of 
reading and saying by heart a whole book fluently, he would 
not be therefore able to give any account of what he had 
read. Although regular instruction in arithmetic, geography, 
history, natural history, or foreign languages is never thought 
of, and no religious instruction is given, it has to be remarked 
that the first and second books contain a great deal of geo- 
graphical, historical, and naturalistic information of an ele- 
mentary and crude kind. These things are set down, however, 
in a highly abstract preceptive way, and are not understood. 
But how long is it since in England Mangnall's ' Questions ' 
and Pinnock's * Catechisms ' were almost universal, and how 
long since maps were considered essential to the teaching of 
geography ? 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 143 

Method of Instruction. Higher stages. — For the 

mass, even of the educated, three or four years is the extent 
of the school period. Those who wish to devote tliemselves 
permanently to studies begin only after this to understand 
what they read, and receive in the course of time a thorough 
explanation of the classical authors. They are also exercised 
in making verses according to prescribed rules, and in writing 
themes in imitation of models. This higher training is con- 
ducted by masters who have passed an examination, and 
have graduated. 

In the public and private colleges lectures are delivered 
on the Four Books and the Five Classics. Four times in 
the month compositions are written and verses made on 
themes which have been previously discussed under the 
guidance of the master. ' The first step in composition is 
the yoking together of double characters. The second is 
the reduplication of these binary compounds, and the con- 
struction of parallels — an idea which runs so completely 
through the whole of Chinese literature, that the mind of 
the student has to be imbued with it at the very outset. 
This is the way he begins : the teacher writes, " wind 
blows," the pupil adds, " rain falls ; " the teacher writes, 
" rivers are long," the pupil adds, " seas are deep " or " moun- 
tains are high," ' ^ &c. To acquire fluency and elegance in 
composition, the Chinese students learn by heart a consider- 
able number of essays which have been written by distin- 
guished scholars in a masterly style ; and these collections in 
considerable numbers are sold in the shops. 

It is on his literary proficiency, reproductive powers, and 
attention to unalterable rules that the student's ultimate 
success wholly depends. A candidate receiving a given 
theme, is not at liberty to sit down and write an essay in 
the terms or sequence which unassisted fancy may dictate. 
There must be no originality of either thought or style. He 
must abide by fixed rules, introducing the subject in so many 
balanced sentences, developing it in so many more, sum- 
1 Education in China, p. 89. Martii). 



144 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

niing up his arguments, and finally reaching the conclusion 
according to received principles of composition. The very- 
number of sentences is prescribed, frequently the number of 
words. And so also with poems. These are invariably on 
the same model — a stated number of characters to each line, 
arbitrary rules of rhyme, trite similes and forced allusions to 
the past. The book-shops of Chinese cities are flooded with 
collections of essays and poems by famous authors of all ages, 
and these are carefully studied by intending competitors in 
the hope of borrowing therefrom something of their vigour 
and refinement (Giles). 

The most highly esteemed book on composition is called 
'The Learner's Bright Mirror.' The steps of an essay as 
prescribed in this book are : 

1. The breaking open of the theme. 

2. Eeceiving the theme. 

3. Beginning to discuss the theme. 

4. Eaising a branch or division. 

5. The passing vein (passing from one idea to another). 

6. The middle division (amplification, &c.). 

7. The closing division (containing further elucidation). 

8. The winding-up division (Morrison). ^ 

As regards school-discipline need I say that, with such aims 
and such methods, the rod is freely and unsparingly used ? 

It is, of course, impossible that there can be in China any 
principles and methods of instruction and education in the 
sense in which Europe uses these words, because there is no 
scientific spirit and no psychology. But as I have said, 
they are not without their books on the art of education 
which contain very sagacious remarks and sound judgments. 
Of these the most important is a ' Treatise on the Education 
of Young Children,' written in the twelfth century by a 
philosopher named Tchow-hi or Chow-tsze ; I suppose the 

1 Professor Douglas, in Society in Cliina, expresses the rules differently, 
but they are substantially the same. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 145 

eminent thinker referred to before ('Diet. Pdd.'). In this 
treatise we find such maxims as these : ' In teaching, a mas- 
ter should not go too quickly from one subject to another, 
and never explain several things at a time. If he observe 
this rule, ideas will arrange themselves and combine of 
themselves in the mind of the pupil. He ought to incite, 
animate, and urge his pupils, but never press them, still less 
force them.' ' If a-master teaches clearly he will make him- 
self understood without dealing in vain and long discoursing.' 
He also says that the grand art of teaching is to get the 
pupil to ask questions, and that he ought to correct the fault 
of a pupil without letting him suspect it. Another collection 
of educational precepts goes into great detail as to the duties of 
teacher and scholar. But in China, as elsewhere, what is 
axiomatic with the educationalist for the most part remains 
with him, and is not part of the practice of the teacher, 
because there is no school of didactics, and therefore no 
rational tradition.^ 

Women remain uneducated except among the wealthy. 
Among these, an educated woman is highly respected for 
her attainments. Her instruction has, of course, been private. 

Conclusion. — I have spoken in a previous part of this 
lecture of the barren results intellectually of the elaborate 
educational curriculum of the Chinese, and this, indeed, is 
one of the causes of the stereotyped continuity of life. The 
poverty of results is due partly to the narrow range of the 
studies, but much more to the purpose, character, and method 
of them. 

The highest intellectual employment of Chinese men of 
culture, apart from the work of administration, is the repeat- 
ing of passages from the Books, and exercising themselves 
in the making of verses, in which perfect exactness in metre 
and conformity to classical usage are all-important, but not 

1 Bishop Gray says (p. 174, vol. i.) that hachaors become members of 
universities, of which there is one in every walled city ! He must refer to 
the Provincial State Colleges, if, indeeil, he is not altogether wrong. 

10 



146 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

more so than beauty of caligraphy. The celebrated novel 
called Yu-Kiao-li, or ' The Two Cousins,' admits us to the 
inner life of the Chinese, and gives us some idea of the 
intellectual condition of its cultured men, and their most 
elevated occupations. Intellectually there is great ability 
and great acuteness, but no originality — nay, a distrust of 
all originating power. The study of poetry, which is so 
largely encouraged, might be expected to exalt the imagina- 
tion and stimulate thought among the Chinese, but even 
where it is not highly artificial and hampered by ridiculous 
rules, it is prosaic and preceptive. The following extracts 
illustrate what I mean : 

The cricket is in the hall. 

And the year is drawing to a close. 

If we do not enjoy ourselves now 

The days and months will have fled. 

But let us not go to excess ; 

Let us think of the duties of our position ; 

Let lis not go beyond bounds in our love of pleasure. 

The virtuous man is ever on his guard. (Legge.) 

As a favourable specimen of the domestic odes I may cite 
the following : 

'Get up, husband, here's the day.' 
' Not yet, wife, the dawn 's still grey.' 
' Get up, sir, and on the night 
See the morning star shines bright. 
Shake ofif slumber, and prepare 
Ducks and geese to shoot and snare. 
All your darts and line may kill 
I will dress for you with skill. 
Thus a blithesome hour we '11 pass, 
Brightened by a cheerful glass ; 
While your lute its aid imparts 
To gratify and soothe our hearts. 

On all whom you may wish to know 
I'll girdle ornaments bestow. 



THE URO- ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 147 

And girdle ornaments I '11 send 
To anyone who calls you friend ; 
With him whose love for you 's abiding 
My girdle ornaments dividing.' 

Again, as a specimen of another class of poetic imagery, the 
following may be taken : 

A Solitary Carouse on a Day in Sprinrj 

The east wind fans a gentle breeze, 

The streams and trees glory in the brightness of ihe spring, 

The bright sun illuminates the green shrubs 

And the falling flowers are scattered and fly away. 

The solitary cloud retreats to the hollow hill, 

The birds return to their leafy haunts. 

Every being has a refuge whither he may turn, 

I alone have nothing to which to cling, 

So, seated opposite the moon shining o'er the cliflF, 

I drink and sing to the fragrant blossoms. 

There is not much of the 'poet's eye in a fine frenzy 
rolling' in all this.^ 

As of poetry, so of literature generally : in our European 
sense we may say confidently that it does not flourish : this 
partly because it is taught, not for its own sake, but for 
ulterior ends, and subject throughout to strict examination 
tests, and to antiquarian fixed forms. The tendency of 
competitive examinations, even among ourselves, is to crush 
out originality and real interest in the very subjects in 
which a student distinguishes himself. The Chinese drama 
is reahstic and photographic, and wanting in all the higher 
qualities. 

In the department of encyclopedias and topographical 
work the Chinese are strong. Their characteristic qualities 
of mind have full scope in productions which demand chiefly 
industry, detailed accuracy, and discriminating judgment. 

1 I have read the whole of Romilly Allen's ' Book of Chinese Poetry,' and 
the above (taken from the Encyc. Brit.) are very favourable specimens indeed. 



148 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

As to moral results, these unquestionably are very far 
indeed from being so high as might be expected from a 
nation whose whole energies are presumed to be set in the 
direction of moral and political training and the supreme 
virtue of propriety, while allowing the people to follow 
their own fancies in religion. After all, is it reasonable to 
expect a high moral result where instruction takes the 
place of training and discipline ? ^ The supreme product 
in China, if we found it, would be a supreme moral pedant, 
just as the supreme product in the sphere of intellect is 
an intellectual pedant. The surrounding of religion with 
rites and ceremonies I have already remarked, while it 
tends to give it permanence, tends also to deprive it of 
vitality. This, indeed, is a trite saying. It is interesting 
to note, however, that the same remark may be made with 
equal truth when an attempt is made by means of an 
elaborate and complicated social ritual to regulate the 
moral and civil relations of men, and dogmatically to pre- 
scribe rules of conduct. The result is a vast appearance 
of ceremonious politeness, which, as it is enjoined and yet 
cannot possibly be always felt, is necessarily accompanied 
with a consciousness of its own hoUowness. Hence the 
disappearance of those very virtues which the Chinese 
sages desired to cultivate — simplicity and truthfulness. 
Hence also trickery and wiliness. Honesty is not a con- 
spicuous virtue in China, and what Europeans call honour 
does not, it seems to me, exist. The whole social fabric 
would seem to depend for its easy working and for the 
absence of violence between individuals, on the mainten- 
ance of a false and elaborate show of mutual respect. Pro- 
fessor Douglas, in the preface to ' Society in China,' says : 
' There is no country in the world where practice and pro- 
fession are more widely separated than in China. The 
empire is pre-eminently one of make-believe. From the 
emperor to the meanest of his subjects, a system of high- 

1 Tlieognis, the old Greek, said this: bt.B6.(TKuv oiiiroTe iroci^ixeis tov KOLKbv 
dv8p' dya06v. 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 149 

sounding pretensions to lofty principles of morality holds 
sway, while the life of the nation is in direct contradiction 
to these assumptions. No imperial edict is complete, and 
no official proclamation finds currency, without protesta- 
tions in favour of aU the virtues. And yet few courts are 
more devoid of truth and uprightness, and no magistracies 
are more corrupt than those of the celestial empire.' 

We must admit, however, that the political aim of the 
educational system is, to a large extent, attained ; and also 
the social aim, for the Chinaman is, generally speaking, a 
good son, and a good subject, an industrious labourer, a man 
of gentle manners, contented and peaceable. On the other 
hand, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that morally, as 
well as intellectually, as measured by Aryan standards, the 
education given leads, at best, to mediocrity. By crushing 
out all initiative it prevents the growth of a free personal- 
ity. Where this is wanting, we may expect to find, not 
only the absence of all independent inquiry into new fields 
of thought, but also the absence of the more manly virtues. 

Perhaps we may say that the secret of failure lies in the 
want of an ideal human aim, as opposed to a narrow political 
or social aim. Man has to be trained ever in the light of a 
type of manhood. All practical aims ought to be subordi- 
nated to this. It cannot be said that the course of education 
in China is illiberal or anti-humanistic ; but restriction of 
aim and intense personal competition can deprive even liberal 
studies of their liberalising influence. The human ideal 
which we desiderate as educational end is not possible except 
where the spirit of man — of the individual man — is nur- 
tured in freedom. God has in all history affirmed this, that 
the highest is conceivable and attainable only through free- 
dom. Many errors, many calamities even, may flow from 
the untrammelled play of human reason ; but these too are 
of God. Changes, and the freedom of mind which is their 
cause, are always hateful to the organising mind, which is a 
tyrannous and levelling mind, whether it clothe itself in the 
garb of a hard cold system like that of the Chinese, or of a 



150 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Catholic Church, a secular imperial bureaucracy, or a com- 
munistic police. No such organisation can rest content until 
it has achieved the enslavement of personality, whose essence 
is always freedom. 

There are among us who are enamoured of state-systems 
which regulate education down to 'its minutest detail, and 
leave no room for the free play of mind : in China we have 
this indirectly accomplished and see it in all its necessary 
rigidity, uniformity, and pedantry. There are who advocate 
a secular system of education : in China we see this in full 
operation. There are who think that all success in the 
education of mind should be measured by external competi- 
tive tests : in China we have this elaborated into an iron 
system. There are who cling by the dogmatic and precep- 
tive, and regard with suspicion the habituating of the mind 
of schoolboys to ideals aesthetic and spiritual, including even 
the simple elements of humanity : in China they will find 
what they desire to see. There are who hold that teachers 
and school-inspectors are heaven-born, and are above the 
study of educational principles and methods (as the Emperor 
Sigismund was supra Grammaticam ) : so China thinks. 

I am not going to elaborate didactic parallels and compari- 
sons, tempting as the field may be ; but this I may say by 
way of retrospect. I think we may find a similarity between 
the ancient Egyptian and the Chinese mind. Both are 
essentially creatures of the practical understanding, and of 
merely preceptive morality ,unfit or indisposed (unlike the 
Aryan) to find the reason in things, and, consequently, essen- 
tially unspeculative and unscientific. And yet how different 
in some respects ! The Egyptian had a profound sense of 
the mystery of life, and of infinite possibilities hereafter. The 
Chinese are essentially prosaic, and of the earth earthy. 
The Egyptian was saved by having, like the Semite, a 
divine standard and sanction, such as it was, and a corre- 
sponding responsibility to the Unseen. The Chinese seem to 
have no standard save the fit and the prudential and the 
' proper,' and cannot, therefore, I venture to say, be deterred 



THE URO-ALTAIC OR TURANIAN RACES 151 

from unworthy action towards either their fellow-citizens or 
others by a sense of responsibility to ideal aims which con- 
nect them with the gods or with God. 

It is the intelligence with which we permeate all school 
studies — that is to say, the free movement of mind which we 
evoke in the young — that alone truly instructs : it is the 
life of personality and personal responsibility which we infuse 
into ethical training and discipline, and the infinite relations 
with which we sanctify it, that can alone rear a people who 
are to be vigorous, virile, and progressive. Mere memory 
work in the sphere of intelligence, mere preceptive and dog- 
matic teaching in the ethical sphere, can produce at best the 
mere semblance of a true man or woman — the sterile con- 
vention of outer obedience. 

We pass now from the highest and most organised expres- 
sion of Turanian or Uro-Altaic civilisation to the Aryan 
races, to which we ourselves belong. 



iVote on Early Forms of Religion 

Primitive religion (if it can be called religion) is known as Ani- 
mism, that is to say belief in the existence of numerous souls or 
spirits. Those spirits on which man imagines himself dependent 
for material felicity and personal security naturally become objects 
of worship as divine beings. But the worship is the offspring of 
slavish fear, and takes all sorts of forms with a view to appease the 
reluctant spirits. Magic and various incantations are also resorted 
to, with a view to control them. There may be also good spirits, 
and among these the spirits of ancestors : to these offerings are also 
made. When spirits enter into an object of nature as a permanent 
residence, and these objects are worshipped, we have fetichism. 
The first priests are those who have or pretend to have the power 
of ingratiating men with spirits or demons by means of magical 
incantations and spells and sacrifices. ' In the animistic religions,' 
says Tiele, * fear is more powerful than any other feeling ; the evil 
spirits receive more homage than the good, the lower more than 
the higher, the local more than the more remote, the special more 
than the general.' There is nothing moral in the relations between 



152 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

men and such beings, since their favour or disfavour depends en- 
tirely on the gifts offered or withheld. The doctrine of immortality 
is, at this early stage, simply the doctrine of continuance, compen- 
sation for good or evil deeds being a late development and probably 
concurrent with a belief in a Supreme Spirit above all other spirits. 
"Where this idea of compensation enters, we have the beginnings of 
the worship of a Being who takes note of moral conduct, though 
not necessarily himself moral according to man's notions. The 
next step is a God who is Himself an ethical Being with human 
relations. 

We are not to depreciate the religion of a nation because we find 
animistic and fetichistic practices existing side by side with a 
higher doctrine, for we have to remember that a conquering race 
may occupy a country with a religion higher than that of its first 
inhabitants, while yet the lower form of religion continues to oper- 
ate — nay even may infect the conquerors. 

Authorities: Encyclopaedias (especially jFwcyc. Brit.), English, French, and 
German; Dr. Morrison's Dictionary; Doolittle's Social Life of the Chinese, 
1866; Giles's Historic China Meadows's China; Bishop Gray's China; 
Legge's Religions of China ; Williams's Middle Kingdom ; Martin's China, 
Political, Commercial, and Social, 1847 ; Ueber Schule-Unterricht und 
Erziehung bei den alten Chinesen, von Dr. J. H. Plath, 1868 ; Essai sur 
Vhistoire de Vinstruction publique en Chine, dc, par E. Biot, 1847 ; China, by 
G. Eug. Simon, 1887 ; Tiele's Outlines of the History of Ancient Religions ; 
Dr. W. A. P. Martin's Han Lin Papers, London and New York, 1880; 
Society in China, by Professor Douglas, 1894. Book of Chinese Poetry (the 
Shi-King) translated by Mr. Romilly Allen, 1891. Chinese School-books. 
Many other books have been consulted. 

Those who wish to read the Chinese sacred literature must, of course, 
betake themselves to Legge's monumental work entitled The Chinese Classics, 
in seven volumes, 1861. 

Note. — There are the remains of an old university at Peking, founded in 
the fourteenth century, but now practically deserted. This institution sells 
the lowest degree, thus giving a qualification to compete for the higher. Mr. 
Martin says that there is a ' formal ' examination for the degree, and that 
prior to the holding of the examination numerous students fill the old halls. 
It is a great abuse. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN 
RACES 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN 
RACES 

HINDUS: MEDO-PEKSIANS : HELLENES: ITALIANS (ROMANS^ 

'It was not only,' says Duncker (vol. iv.), 'in the lower 
valley of the Nile, on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, 
and along the coast and on the heights of Syria, that inde- 
pendent forms of intellectual and civic life grew up in the 
ancient world.' By the side of the early civilisations of 
Egypt, the Semitic races, and the Chinese, we find forms of 
culture developed among races very different in their nature 
and temperament. The Medo-Persian civilisation is much 
later, it is true, than the Egyptian or the Semitic, but the 
branch of the Aryan race which crossed into India may 
claim an antiquity for civilised forms of life second only to 
that of Egypt and Babylonia. 

The common characteristic of the Egyptian and Semitic 
and Chinese religions, in so far as they touched the people, 
was their externalism. In some of the highest utterances of 
Egypt, it is true, we find ethical conceptions characterised 
by sanity and humanity, but these did not emanate from 
the acknowledged relation of man to God, but rather arose, 
I think, out of the doctrine of immortality. The external- 
ism of the Jewish religion was far in advance of that of 
other nations, because it was an externalism of moral acts, 
and not merely of ceremonies. The Semitic family gener- 
ally have, it is true, through prophets and hymn-writers, 
admitted all who choose to follow them to great theologico- 
ethical ideas. But the popular religion of all these races 
was an external system ; and, in the case of all save the 
Israelites, it was a superstition. The spirituality of religion 



156 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

was lost in ceremonial, and the practical ethics which the 
religions might have yielded were choked by external observ- 
ances. All externalism tends to superstition, it matters not 
what form the externalism takes. Even in its very highest 
Christian form, it tends towards what is little better than 
an elevated and aesthetic fetichism. With superstition is 
always associated fear, and that awe of arbitrary unseen 
powers which produces slavish minds. In their political 
relations, Egyptian and Semite and Mongolian were all ahke 
slaves rather than subjects. Further development was 
impossible save by the introduction of a new principle — 
the personal and free relation of the human spirit to an 
ethical God. This, wherever it exists, moulds political 
forms and social relations. It is in truth, the living unity, 
or rather identity, of the religious idea with moral ideas 
which alone can permanently lift rehgiou out of the category 
of superstitions. God must dwell with men and in each 
man as a self-conscious person. Thus it is that Christ alone 
makes nations free by making each man a son of God. 

When we pass from the Egyptian and Semitic territories 
to the home of the Aryan races, we feel like travellers 
ascending from monotonous and oppressive plains to a cool 
and invigorating table-land. The region east of the Caspian, 
which is still, spite of recent scepticism, regarded as the 
original seat of the Aryan or Indo-European race, sent its 
Persian and Hindu emigrants to the south-east, and succes- 
sive waves of Kelt, Sclave, Teuton, and Hellene (including 
Italian) to the north and west. 

It is a striking fact, however, that the fresh and virile 
spirit of this vigorous race could not sustain itself on the 
plains of India. The Hindus succumbed to the influences 
of nature, which were too great and overwhelming to admit 
of the free growth of the self-conscious personality so con- 
spicuous in their brethren. These influences, and the habits 
of thought and life of the pre-Aryan races who formed a 
large proportion of the population, developed characteristics 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 157 

in the Hindus somewhat akin to much that we find in the 
Egyptian and Semite ; and for this reason, as well as because 
of their greater antiquity, we shall speak of them before we 
ascend to the clearer atmosphere of the Medo-Persian hills, 
where the true Aryan spirit which we inherit first clearly 
declared itself. 



(A) INDIA AND THE HINDUS 

It is apparent enough from the preceding chapters on educa- 
tional history, that it is quite impossible to give anything 
approaching to a correct view of what constitutes the educa- 
tion of a people, without first putting before the reader an 
outline of that people's civilisation. And civilisation re- 
solves itself, for educational purposes at least, into the 
religious and moral conceptions of a nation and its con- 
sequent political (or at least social) organisation. At the 
same time, as I have already said, to treat of the character- 
istics of a nation's life and civilisation in detail is to forget 
the precise object of the educational historian, and even to 
obscure it. Such a brief account of a people and their special 
characteristics as is essential to the understanding of the 
education which tradition and environment unconsciously 
gave to all the members of it, is sufficient. This must always 
be followed by a statement of the means which the State, 
more or less consciously, took to bring up its children with a 
view to maintain and perpetuate the national life, if any 
record of this remain.-^ 

When we approach the education of a country like ancient 
India, or rather that portion of it which was Hindu, we are 
at once met by the great and all-influencing social fact of 
caste. Of this we may be certain, that wherever in ancient 

1 I may be allowed here to repeat the words of the Preface, that any attempt 
to generalise in short compass the characteristics of a civilisation, must always 
be inadequate ; and though not necessarily erroneous it must want balance 
because of the absence of historical development and of many qualifying 
considerations. 



158 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

times there was a distinct sacerdotal hereditary caste, the 
higher education of the country was practically the educa- 
tion of that caste. Even in Europe this was the case up to 
the twelfth century, although the priestly order was open to 
all. With the rise of the universities rose the differentiation 
of the professions as lay spheres of intellectual activity ; and 
it was only in so far as it destroyed sacerdotalism as an ex- 
clusive representative of the Divine, that Protestantism in 
the sixteenth century gained the kingdom of knowledge and 
culture for the people as a whole. ' All are priests, all are 
equal in the sight of God,' is of the essence of Keformed 
Christianity : this was the new, or rather the revived, doc- 
trine. In Egypt largely, and in Mesopotamia and India 
wholly, the priestly order included what in modern times we 
call the faculties of law and medicine, nay even sometimes 
also the departments of architecture and music. It thus 
comprehended all the learning of the time. In so far as 
instruction outside this circle may be met with in a caste 
society, it must inevitably be, so far as the great mass of the 
people is concerned, of a very slight and perfunctory charac- 
ter, and aim chiefly at putting in the hands of a limited por- 
tion of the people the necessary mercantile arts of reading, 
writing, and elementary arithmetic. All else is the education 
of apprenticeship to arts: a training in itself, however, of 
no mean character, although not aiming at the education of 
mind as mind. 

The earliest civilisation of India may be embraced within 
2000 to 1400 B.C. — the period of plastic traditions and of 
primitive Aryan survivals. 

The books which embody the intellectual and moral faith 
of the Hindus are the Veda, the six systems of philosophy, 
the laws of Manu, and Buddhism. The Veda consists of 
three parts, (1) prayer and praise, (2) ritualistic precept with 
prose illustrations, (3) Upanishad or mystical and secret doc- 
trine, written in prose, with occasional verse. The Code of 
Manu is a collection of traditionary usages and customs of a 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 159 

social and domestic kind, of practices of government and 
legal procedure, penitential exercises and ' consequences of 
acts.' It abounds in excellent moral precepts. The other 
treatises mentioned above are religious, theological, and meta- 
physical, but even the code itself contemplated a religious 
end — the transmigration of the individual soul and final 
beatitude. All these books spring from ancient oral tradi- 
tion, gradually accumulating and receiving as time went on 
additions and critical expansion. The Vedic hymns of praise 
and thanksgiving and adoration of gods we may place as 
early as 1200 B.C. The recension of the law-book of Manu 
dates only about 500 B.C., but, like all literature in Oriental 
countries, it existed, in its essential parts at least, long before 
as a tradition. 

I do not propose to enter into the question of Hindu faith 
and practice generally, but merely to bring into relief the 
governing idea of the fundamental faith of the nation, what- 
ever subordinate polytheistic forms the doctrine may have 
taken. I accept this governing idea as moulding the true 
life of the people, and also as itself primarily an expression 
of their way of looking at life. 

The Brahmanical caste-system gradually grew up between 
1200 B.C. and 1000 B.C. The Buddhistic reformation began 
about 500 B.C., but it was only from about 242 B.C. that 
Buddhism formulated itself as a rival of Brahmanism. 
Brahmanical religion had again gained ascendency in 500 
A.D., and Buddhism was exiled to Ceylon, some portions of 
the north of India, Burmah, Thibet, China and Japan. 

The caste system, I have said, determined the area, as well 
as the character, of the education. By caste we mean that kind 
of social organisation by which the natural divisions of the 
people are authoritatively fixed and made hereditary. These 
divisions were into priests, including scholars and legislators ; 
warriors, including executive administrators'; merchants, 
including all industrial members of the community who 
employed labour ; and labourers. One of the Hindu legends 
(invented by the priests) is that the supreme caste of Brah- 



160 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

mans proceeded out of the mouth of Brahma the creator; 
the warrior (mihtary executive caste) Kshatriyas, out of the 
arms ; the industrial and mercantile Vaisyas, from the thigh ; 
and the servile class or Sudras, from the foot. Besides these, 
there is a still lower class, standing outside the pale of the 
Brahmanical social organisation, called Pariah in Southern 
India, and Chandalas in other districts. The Sudras and the 
other lowest caste are understood to have been the aboriginal 
inhabitants of India prior to the Aryan Hindu invasion and 
conquest. 

Mixture of castes was not absolutely forbidden, except as 
regards the marriage of men with women of a higher caste ; 
but it entailed (and still entails) disadvantages, especially on 
the children. Indeed, it would appear that the caste organi- 
sation was never quite so iron as has been sometimes 
represented, although the Brahmans naturally did all they 
could to perpetuate it. In the post-Buddhistic reformed 
Brahmanism a more liberal doctrine was recognised ; for it 
is held that the humblest member of the lowest caste might 
attain to union with Brahma, the supreme all-embracing 
Spirit, and this fact must have largely influenced the way 
in which the castes gradually came to regard each other. 
The following verses from the great Sanskrit epic, the 
Mahabharata, are in this relation interesting. 

THE PATH OF SALVATION 

A spirit (Ydkshd) asks : 

What is it makes a Brahman ? Birth, 
Deep study, sacred lore, or worth ? 

Ki7ig Yudhishthira ansivers : 

Nor study, sacred lore, nor birth 
The Brahman makes ; 't is only worth. 

All men — a Brahman most of all — 
Should virtue guard with care and pains. 
Who virtue rescues, all retains ; 
But all is gone with virtue's fall. 



TEE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 161 

The men in books Avho take delight, 
Frequenters all of learning's schools, 
Are nothing more than zealous fools ; 
The learn'd are those who act aright. 

More vile than one of Sudra race 
Tliat Brahman deem whose learned store 
Embraces all the Vedic lore, 
If evil deeds his life disgrace. 

That man deserves the Brahman's name, 
Who offerings throws on Agui's flame 
And knows his senses how to tame.^ 

In the earlier Vedic thought we find characteristics which 
connect the primitive religion of the Hindus with the Medo- 
Persian, which found finally its highest expression in Zoroas- 
trianism. The worship of Mithra the Sun and of fire was 
universal among the Aryans, and the recognition of three 
powerful gods along with an innumerable number of good 
and evil spirits. The climatic influence of India, however, so 
different from that of Medo-Persia, told on the primitive 
genius of the people, and as Brahmanism developed (1200 
B.C. onwards), we find in it elements wholly antagonistic to 
the Zoroastrian individualism and the continual personal 
contest between light and darkness, good and evil, which that 
religion teaches. The old Vedic gods were retained by the 
Hindus, and sacrificial services to them, both domestic and 
public, were numerous. In all the Vedic hymns there is a 
pure worship of several gods — worship of nature and the spirit 
of nature. They are also highly ethical and personal. In 
the course of time this simple religion, influenced doubtless 
by the aboriginal tribes, who were by no means savages, de- 
generated into idolatry, and a religion of rites and ceremonies 
divorced from ethics. At the same time there gradually 
emerged among the more intelligent, the idea of the supreme 
god Brahma, who was universal, not merely national. In 

1 Translated by the late Dr. Muir. 
11 



162 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

connection with this theological conception arose a mystic 
philosophy ; but philosophy and religion had in India their 
history and development as well as elsewhere, which here we 
cannot attempt to follow. 

After a certain date, however, we find that through the 
whole system of thought there runs one general governing 
idea as the reflection of the mind of the race. Except in so 
far as it is atheistic, that idea is pantheistic — forms of 
belief which tend to the same ethical results. The practical 
effects of the pantheistic temperament are conspicuous ; for 
the highest moral aim of the Hindu is not self-sacrifice in the 
sense of the sacrifice of all desires to the duties of this life, 
which is the true Christian idea, but it is rather the abnega- 
tion of life itself with a view to the absorption of the indi- 
vidual into the ' All' The dominating idea in the conception 
of God is that of Absolute Being; inmost essence of all 
things. Being is quiescent : it is the negation of activity. 
The personal immortality of some of the Vedic hymns ceased 
under the influence of this mystic theology to be an operative 
faith. Transmigration was only a step in the process of 
absorption. It is manifest that the idea of perfect repose, a 
repose amounting to the death of personality, could not but 
largely influence daily conduct. Before the All-One, the 
particular and the individual are in truth of no moment, 
mere passing shows, and all that fills the senses is essentially 
illusory (Maya). What a contrast to the Hebrews ! Such 
an idea, if rooted in the nature of a people, is an effective 
check to all self-reliant activity, weakens all sense of indi- 
vidual responsibility, and destroys what may be called the 
ambition of excellence. Even the daily duties of life are not 
done as the act of a free individual, seeking thereby the good 
of others and the growth of himself in virtue; and moral 
conduct, though it may be in itself unexceptionable, finds it- 
self placed on the same level as sacerdotal prescriptions and 
sacrificial acts. Withdrawal from life and an ascetic contem- 
plation become the supreme virtues. The idea of fatalism, 
also, though it may not find formal expression, inevitably 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 163 

underlies the lives of men whose abstract conceptions of the 
end of life are such as we have indicated. Wuttke very well 
says that people of a strong personality pray, ' Thy kingdom 
come ; ' the Chinese pray, ' May thy kingdom remain ; ' the 
Hindus, ' May that which thou has created perish : ' that is 
to say, ' May all existence be swallowed up in Being.' 

It may be said that the above is, strictly speaking, the 
Buddhistic conception ; but in truth the highest form of 
Brahmanism which contemplates ultimate absorption in 
Brahma has the same essential characteristics as Buddhism, 
The latter was in antagonism to the former, inasmuch as it 
preached salvation through the efforts of the individual soul 
after perfection in Nirvana, the futility of prayers and sac- 
rifices and ceremonials, and ignored the divisions of caste. 
But it was itself a Brahmanical development ; ethical and 
universal instead of national, doctrinal, and ceremonial. The 
Buddhistic return of the imperfect soul to other visible forms 
was similar to the Brahmanical transmigration, though not 
identical with it. The goal of Brahmanism again was a 
union with Absolute Being not to be distinguished from 
absorption, while the goal of Buddhism was the extinction of 
the empirical self or individual,^ and a state of Nirvana from 
which non-existence is not to be distinguished, because indi- 
viduality is gone. Nothing, in fact, is left but an atom of 
soul-stuff ; at best, the continuity of the evolution of * Truth ' 
towards which as a cosmic process the soul which has 
attained Nirvana may be said in some way to contribute. 
At the same time the increasing mass of followers could not 
do without a god and Buddha became exalted to that posi- 
tion and the usual degradation of religion followed. 

The educational significance of the mystic doctrine of the 
highest state of the man-spirit on this earth and its ultimate 
goal hereafter, lies not so much in the effect such a system 
of thought would have on the Hindus, but in the fact that it 

^ I say ' empirical self because Gautama seems to me never to have 
properly distinguished between the empirical self of individuality and the 
self-conscious ego of personality. 



164 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

was a natural and full expression of the genuine Hindu 
mind which was at once religious, dreamy, and metaphysical. 
Not only the Brahman and Gautama-Buddha, but the ration- 
alist philosopher Kapila, were all equally impressed with the 
nothingness of the world of sense and the misery of human 
life ; and all alike contemplated escape from the conditions 
of earthly existence. With the two latter there was no 
God; and this gave the Brahman his advantage when 
Buddhism had to be fought and crushed. At the same time 
the epics show that the Hindu mind was not insensible to 
the charm of nature and life ; but this in a passive way. 
Natural forms filled them with wonder and yielded a mass 
of legendary fable. And yet, as Duncker says, nature was 
essentially a ' magical illusion.' The general sentiment of 
the thoughtful Hindu, irrespective of sect and party, may 
perhaps be fairly summed up in the following verses : 

THE PRIEST OE BEAHMA TO HIS DYING 
DISCIPLE 

' Boy ! to fear death which only means 
That body and soul, twin life in bonds, 
Part and go forth tlieir several ways ! ' 

' But I no longer am ; my individual self dissolved.* 

' That may be so : and yet, if so it be, 
What then 1 Thy soul goes gladly forth 
To mix with God, sole Being, and live in Him, 
Yielding its tribute to Universal Mind — 
A spirit atom in the Eternal One — 
Serving the more (high destiny !) to swell 
The bliss of Being, which alone can be.' 

* This pleasing body to the grave so grim ? ' 

' Not so. Say rather to the arms, the kindly arms 

Of gracious mother earth from whence it sprang, 

Who turns it quick into her vital sap 

That it may pass into a million forms 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 165 

Of unreality that mock the sense, 

Yet constitute the beauty of this world ; 

No longer but a part, as now ; but interfused, 

And dwelling in the life of grass and trees, 

Made glorious in the budding flowers of spring, 

Melting into the green of tidal caves, 

Eolling in thunder and the ocean storm, 

Gracious and tender in the light of eve, 

And splendid in the rise and set of suns. 

For soul and body such the rapturous end.' 

It is worthy of note that the Hindu religion was not in 
its essence and Vedic origin a religion of externalism. It 
was the inner Life of the soul that was of moment, and when 
this was lost sight of, Buddhism arose as a Brahmanical sect. 
It was because sacrifice, ceremonial, and penance began at 
a certain period to supersede the intellectual and ethical 
elements of Brahmanism that reform was inevitable. 

Into the popular form of Brahmanism, both prior and 
subsequently to Buddhism, all sorts of corruptions entered. 
Superstitions and idolatries always abounded, and numerous 
sects arose. The uneducated mind must always have gods 
that are accessible, and pantheism can yield thousands of 
these. New gods, moreover, were authoritatively recognised 
from time to time to meet the wants of the peoj)le. The 
post-Buddhistic doctrine of a ' Trinity ' of gods (as it is 
incorrectly called) who were emanations of Absolute Being 
had no national and popular influence in pre-christian times. 

Concurrently with this popular degradation of religion 
the abstract and metaphysical development went on in 
the hands of the intellectual few. And, in addition to a 
metaphysical religion, with its hymns and prayers, active 
philosophical schools, and a school of singularly acute 
grammarians, we also find a literature in the modern sense. 
The tales of heroes, which were traditional, reach a literary 
consummation in the great epics — tlie Eamayana, which 
presents in a continuous story a high type of human life ; 



166 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

and the Mahabharata, which has been called an 'encyclo- 
paedia of tradition,' and is of great length.^ These epics are 
the highest literary expression of the Hindu mind and have 
exercised a great influence on the life of the people. They 
have reference to an early state of society ; but they took 
their present form only about 200 B.C. These epics (probably 
to meet the Buddhistic heresy) teach transitory incarnations 
of the Divine Being. 

The ethical virtues of a race whose deepest convictions 
were pantheistic and whose highest hope was personal 
absorption in the Universal, were, as we might expect, tem- 
perance, peaceableness, patience, docility, gentleness, and 
resignation. These virtues are naturally accompanied by 
politeness, respect for parents and elders, and obedience to 
the civil and ecclesiastical powers. But duty in our com- 
manding sense of the word, and the virtues flowing from a 
strong personality that controls circumstances and shapes 
the life of each man, were not to be expected. Contrast the 
Hindu conception and its effects on national character with 
the Medo-Persian : the former stands as far above the latter 
in metaphysical profundity as the latter over the former in 
its ethical simplicity and truth and in its virile acceptance of 
life and its duties as a privilege. And yet both alike are de- 
velopments of the same Aryan primitive religious conceptions. 

EDUCATION AMONG THE HINDUS 

Aim, organisation and materials of education. — 

The end of the higher education is thus expressed in Manu's 
' Book of Laws ' : ' To learn and to understand the Vedas, to 
practise pious mortifications, to acquire divine knowledge of 
the law and of philosophy, to treat with veneration his natural 
and his spiritual father [i.e. the priest] these are the chief 
duties by means of which endless felicity is attained.' And 
endless felicity is absorption. 

The brief summary we have given of the Hindu philosophy 

1 Seven times the length of the combined Iliad and Odyssey. See Monier 
Williams's Indian Wisdom for an account of these poems. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 167 

of life would have led us to expect such words as these. ^ 
We may with advantage here contrast the Chinese and Hindu 
educational end. ' The Chinese,' says Wuttke, ' educate for 
practical life, the Indians for the ideal : those for earth, these 
for heaven [individual blessedness or absorption] ; those 
educate their sons for entering the world, these for gohig out 
of it. Those educate for citizenship, these for the priesthood 
[i.e. as the ideal of life] . Those for industrial activity, these 
for knowledge. Those teach their sons the laws of the state, 
these teach them the essence of the godhead. Those lead 
their sons into the world, these lead them out of the world 
into themselves. Those teach their children to earn and to 
enjoy, these to beg and to renimciate.' This may be a strong 
way of stating the case, but it has in it a large element of 
truth. The writer has, however, omitted to note the promi- 
nence given to certain kinds of virtue, and to social obUga- 
tions generally, in the ancient tradition of the Hindus and 
the code of Manu. The ethical teaching of the Vedic hymns 
was as pure, though by no means so exalted, as that of the 
Jewish prophets. Although not enforced by a like definite 
divine sanction, yet, on the other hand, there was perhaps 
greater inner moral freedom in the Vedic system in its purity 
tlian in the Jewish, and less of mere externalism, until the 
development into Brahmanism. It taught a doctrine of 
personal immortahty. Morality and religion were closely 
connected, and the doctrine of transmigration had not yet 
been thought of. In this respect, as in his more profound 
philosophy, the Hindu vindicated his Aryan ancestry. This 
is substantially true, spite of the multitude of ceremonial acts 
which the Brahman ultimately imposed on the people, the 
reaction against which so powerfully aided the new teaching 
of Buddha in the fifth century B.C. 

Only the other day we found in a philosophical treatise an 

1 I use the past tense in speaking of India ; until it was modified by the 
British power, native education seemed to remain essentially unchanged in 
its main characteristics till this century. It has to be noted that the Moham- 
medans who preceded the British in India have their own schools and colleges. 



168 PRE-CURISTIAN EDUCATION 

interesting evidence of the persistent continuity of the Hindu 
point of view,^ spite of European influences. ' The knowledge 
of the supreme soul is the ultimate aim of science. The 
supreme soul is one Infinite Lord of All, and is the dispenser 
of reward and retribution,' The ethical conception finds 
expression thus : ' Eight knowledge is calculated to give an 
insight into the motives of human conduct, teach the exer- 
cise of sound discretion in all matters, and lead to the attain- 
ment of final beatitude.' 

If we may trust Dutt's * Civilisation in Ancient India,' 
there early arose (probably 1,000 years B.C.) Brahmanic 
settlements called Parishads, which approximated closely to 
what we should call collegiate institutions of learning. 
These Parishads were in later times understood to consist of 
twenty-one Brahmans well-versed in philosophy, theology, 
and law ; but, in their beginnings, three able Brahmans in a 
village, learned in the Vedas and competent to maintain the 
sacrificial fire, constituted a Parishad. (Dutt, i. 249.) To 
these centres men who wished to devote their lives to learn- 
ing and who belonged to the caste might go and receive 
instruction in the Vedas, and in such traditionary law and 
astronomy and philosophy as was current. Private schools 
also existed, conducted by scholarly men at their own venture, 
and to these many boys were sent for training, giving per- 
sonal and menial service in return for instruction. These 
boys did not necessarily belong to the Brahmanical caste. 

Prior to the above rudimentary form of educational organ- 
isation it would appear that at the period of transition from 
the Vedic to the Brahmanic stage of religious development 
(say about 1200 B.C.), the courts of the kings were the centres 
of such culture as existed. Priests, of course, were attached 
to these courts, and in connection with them there grew up 
what may be called ' schools ' for the study and handing down 
of the sacred hymns and sacrificial practices. 

1 Kalyana 3fajusha, or the Casket of Blessings, an exposition of the prin- 
ciples of Hindu logic, by B. Swami (Calcutta, 1893). 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 169 

Megasthenes, the Greek, who lived in North India three 
centuries before the Christian era, and indeed all the Greeks, 
spoke of the Brahmanical priests as the ' caste of philoso- 
phers;' and with truth, for metaphysics played as large a 
part in the forming of the Hindu religion as the Vedic 
hymns did. We are not, consequently, to look on the 
Brahmaus as if they were, in the narrow sense, a priestly 
order. They were a caste, and men of Brahmanical descent 
constituted the aristocracy of India — an aristocracy with 
which learning and character were closely associated. The 
Chinese aristocracy, after the abolition of feudalism, was, 
as we found, not only associated with, but founded on, 
intellect, and renewed itself in every successive generation. 
This large Brahmanical body was, on the contrary, heredi- 
tary, but the members of it always received the highest 
education which India could afford. Among them were 
the recognised chiefs of all learning as well as of religion, 
and they discharged many important functions in the State. 
In every Brahmanic family it still is, we are told, the 
custom to study and learn by heart a particular Veda. 
Those who desired to prosecute the higher studies were 
attached to particular Brahmans who devoted themselves 
to the work of instruction. A thoroughly equipped Brah- 
man was understood to acquire by heart all the sacred 
books mentioned a few pages back. And when we consider 
that the Brahmanic colleges taught all the astronomy and 
mathematics known, and frequently carried their pupils into 
the elaborate linguistic treatise of Panini, we must recog- 
nise in the substance of the highest Hindu education a fully 
adequate course of liberal study, embracing as it did theology, 
philosophy, language, and science, while including the whole 
of the national literature as that gradually took shape.^ 

I think it desirable to emphasise the fact that while the 
memorial acquisition of the sacred writings, and this with 
scrupulous fidelity, was the chief object of Brahmanical 

1 The Brahmanical schools existing from the earliest times developed into 
important colleges, such as that at Benares. 



170 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

instruction, tlie minds of the young Brahmans were brought 
into contact with philosophical systems and the general 
literature of the country. In such a course of study there 
was both discipline and culture. A similar system of in- 
struction we found in China, but with this difference, that 
the young Chinese had the printed book to help them. The 
distinction between the education of the Chinese and the 
Hindus lies in the matter of their sacred works, their philo- 
sophical and literary tradition, and the prescribed goal of 
their studies. 

We are told ^ that there was a scheme of life laid down 
for the higher castes which involved continuous study, and 
was divided into four stages, viz. studentship, married life, 
retirement, and forest life. But it is impossible that the 
scheme could be carried out by any save the very devoted 
Brahman. It is chiefly to the concluding period that the 
words in the Manu Code apply, ' Let him not desire to die ; 
Let him not desire to live ; let him wait for his time, as a 
servant for the payment of his wages.' 

As to the rest of the nation, it would seem certain that the 
teaching and schools of the Brahmans were not only open to 
the caste of warriors and the industrial caste, but that they 
were expected to take advantage of them. There was no 
esoteric doctrine. The only exclusive privilege of the Brah- 
mans was, not doctrine but, the functions of priest and 
teacher. Advantage was taken by many in the two castes 
next in order of this freedom to learn. The warriors, more- 
over, had a course of discipline in martial exercises. 

Of the industrial caste, while some of these studied por- 
tions of the ancient books, we do not find that as a class they 
had any special instruction in reading, writing, and arith- 
metic. Boys followed the occupations of their parents, and 
received domestic training in these. Megasthenes, the Greek, 
speaks about 300 B.C. of the absence of the art of writing 
among the Indians. The art of writing certainly existed 
long before the time of Alexander's raid into India, but the 
I Max Miiller, Lectures on tlie Origin of Religion, p. 343. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 171 

habit of relying on oral teaching and memory was inveterate, 
and the writing down of traditionary literature was even 
looked upon with some suspicion.^ In the transactions of 
ordinary life, as well as in learning, there can be no doubt 
that great reliance was placed on the memory. The remark 
of Megasthenes, however, puts it beyond doubt that among 
the population generally, writing was little known. 

I can find no evidence of arithmetic being taught to the 
industrial class, but we have to remember that the very ele- 
mentary arithmetic required in each occupation would be 
acquired under his master as part of the apprentice work of 
every boy. 

The lowest caste did the menial work of the nation, and 
learned nothing. 

Speaking generally, then, we may say that for 1,000 years 
B.C. the Brahmauical education was extensive and thorough, 
and that it was shared in to a certain extent by a consider- 
able number in the second and third castes. It was, how- 
ever, entirely oral in the earlier centuries ; but later, it em- 
braced reading and writing, and an introduction to the epic 
literature as well as to the sacred books : probably also to 
mathematics.^ 

Apart from such literary and religious education as the 
more ambitious might gain for themselves by the help of the 
Brahmanic teachers, the members of the second and third 
castes received their education from the laws, tradition, and 
customs of their country as handed down through the family. 
It seems to me, however, that it was to the village commune, 
so universal a feature of Indian social organisation, that the 
young chiefly owed the education which is elsewhere chiefly 

1 Virgil {^^n. vi. 74) expresses well this objection to the written word 
common to all the Oriental races : 

' Foliis tantum ne carmina manda, 
Ne turbata volent rapidis ludibria ventis : 
Ipsa canas, oro.' 

2 I think that to say more than this is to infer more than the actual facts 
justify. 



172 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

given by family tradition. These communes have always 
exercised a potent influence: and I am the more disposed 
to substitute the commune for the family as the vehicle and 
organ of the education of tradition, because of the position of 
woman among the Hindus, of which I shall shortly speak. 
But what was the nature of this traditionary oral village 
teaching ? Apart from rehgious and ceremonial acts and the 
settlement of questions moral and legal arising among them- 
selves, we may safely say that the teaching was of a kind 
that naturally would find acceptance among a religious, con- 
templative, and ethically disposed people — the teaching of 
fables, allegories, and parables. These fireside tales seem to 
have been numerous. And that this must have been so we 
find from two works published in post-christian times which 
contain popular stories embodying the moral faith of the 
people. Their oldest collection of fables and proverbs is 
called the ' Pantschatantra ; ' it dates from the fifth century 
after Christ, and was translated in the sixth century into 
Persian under the name of ' The Friend of Knowledge ; ' then 
from Persian into the Arabic, from the Arabic into the 
Greek, Turkish, Syrian, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, English, 
French, and German. In that book we find such utterances 
as the following ; and when we consider that the book is full 
of fable and allegory, and consider further its poetic feeling, 
we become alive to the spirit that animates Hindu life and 
education among the masses of the people. 

' As the tree sliades the man who is ahont to cut it down, and as 
the moon shines in the hut even of the lowhest Chandahi, so must 
a man love those who hate him.' 

'Be humble, for the tender grass bows itself unhurt before the 
storm, while mighty trees are sliattered to pieces by it.' 

' Virtue, after which man ought to strive, needs a mighty effort, 
for a cocoanut falls not through the shaking of a crow.' 

' A knowledge of arms and of learning are both equally very 
famous, but the first is in an old man folly, the second is worthy 
of honour at every period of life.' 

'A ipaij without knowledge, though he possess youth and 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 173 

beauty and high birth, does not excel, like the odourless Kinchuka 
flower.' 

' Education is higher than beauty and concealed treasures. It 
accompanies us on our journey through strange places and gives us 
inexhaustible strength.' 

' The wise man must strive to gain knowledge and wealth as if 
he were not subject to death, but the duties of religion he must 
fulfil as if death were hovering already on his lips.' 

' Like as figures on a new vase are not easily washed out, so is it 
with wisdom of youth, through the charm of fable.' 

Such are some of the sentiments on which the Indian 
youth was reared — all conveyed through a mass of fable and 
allegory. The Hitopadega is a subsequent collection (see 
Fritze's German translation) of a similar kind. What a con- 
trast they present to the popular literary inheritance of the 
Egyptians and Chinese ! ^ 

Woman 

The position of the woman among the Hindus was always 
that of subordination and subjection to the man. The esti- 
mate of female character and possibilities was low. ' A female 
child, a young girl, a wife, shall never do anything according 
to their own will, not even in their own house. While a 
child she shall depend on her father ; during her youth on 
her husband ; and, when a widow, on her sons.' (Manu, v. 
147.) Women were regarded as essentially inferior to man, 
and having for the sole purpose of their existence the bear- 
ing of children and the tending of the husband. As might 
be expected from this view of the place of woman, she was 
excluded from all instruction. So strong, indeed, was the 
prejudice against the education of women, that the power to 
read and write was regarded as a reproach to them. The 
only exception was in the case of the dancing girls — these 
being daughters of various castes devoted, when yet children, 

1 I see just advertised (1895) a series of translations of Hindu tales which 
formed part, and probably a large part, of the educational material of the 
people. 



174 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

to the services of the temple. As servants of the temple and 
* maidens of the god,' the dancing girls had to cultivate their 
intelligence; mothers of households, on the contrary, their 
heart only, lest they should be drawn away by intellectual 
cultivation from domestic duties. The female servants of the 
temple were instructed in reading, writing, music, dancing, 
and singing. Their duties were to sing the praises of the 
god they served, and to dance on festive occasions. They 
were divided into two classes — the better class bemg con- 
fined within the temple, and restricted to temple services ; 
the second and lower class being allowed greater freedom, 
and permission to perform at marriage festivities and the 
banquets of the nobility. 

It is because of the position occupied by women that I 
have assigned more influence to the commune than to the 
family in the education of the young Hindu. It has to be 
noted, however, that in early Vedic times, the authorship of 
hymns and songs was ascribed to women, as in the case of 
the Israelites. 

Method and Discipline. Teachers. — We are told 
that the teacher must himself have passed through the 
recognised curriculum, and have fulfilled all the duties of a 
Brahmanical student (brahmdJcarin) before he is allowed to 
become a teacher, and he must teach such students only as 
submit to all requirements imposed by usage. The method 
of instruction was, as I have said, oral tradition, and the 
memory was consequently called upon to bear a burden 
which to a European would be intolerable. The rote char- 
acter of the teaching began from the beginning ; for the boy 
learned the alphabet by heart and some ten or twenty pages 
of Sanskrit before he could understand a word. Thereafter, 
explanation came (more or less) ; but the main object was to 
learn the sacred books accurately by heart, not from a printed 
page but from the mouth of a teacher. The following is 
from Max Miiller's ' Lectures on the Origin of Religion,' p. 
1^9, and are the 4irections given in an authoritative Sanscrit 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 175 

book. The teacher, we are told, should settle down iii a 
proper place. If he has only one pupil or two, they should 
sit on his right side : if more, they must sit as there is room 
for them. At the begmning of each lecture the pupils em- 
brace the feet of their teacher and say : ' Eead, sir.' The 
teacher answers : ' Om ' (yes), and then pronounces two 
words, or, if it is a compound, one. When the teacher has 
pronounced one word or two, the first pupil repeats the first 
word, but if there is anything that requires explanation the 
pupil says ' Sir ' ; and after it has been explained to him 
' Om (yes), sir.' 

'In this manner they go on till they have finished a 
jprasna (question), which consists of three verses, or, if they 
are verses of more than forty to forty-two syllables, of two 
verses. If they are pankti-verses of forty to forty-two sylla- 
bles each, a prasna may comprise either two or three ; and 
if a hymn consists of one verse only, that is supposed to form 
a ]}rasna. After the prasna is finished they have all to 
repeat it once more and then to go on learning it by heart, 
pronouncing every syllable with the high accent. After the 
teacher has first told a prasna to his pupil on the right, the 
others go round him to the right and this goes on till the 
whole lecture is finished; a lecture consisting generally of 
sixty (?) prasnas. At the end of the last half verse the 
teacher says "Sir," and the pupil replies " Om (yes), sir," 
repeating also the verses required at the end of a lecture. 
The pupils then embrace the feet of their teacher and are 
dismissed.' 

' Only those, it is said, whose heart and speech are ever 
pure and attentive, can enjoy the full fruit of the study of 
the Vedas : ' and it was considered a great offence to study 
them without an authorised instructor. We thus see that 
before the introduction of writing, and for centuries after, the 
pupil learned by rote from the recitation of the master, a 
laborious and prolonged process. And when they had MSS. 
they were read aloud until they were known by heart, with- 
out being necessarily understood. Thus, the receiving of 



176 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

tradition from the lips of a master was necessarily the form 
of all teaching, and the attitude of the learner was servile 
acceptance. This notion of instruction both as regards 
method and the relation of pupil to teacher was, as I have 
frequently said, characteristic of the Oriental generally, and 
still is so, spite of printing and books. 

The disciphne among tlie Hindus generally seems to have 
been gentle, and only in the extremest cases was there any 
severity. Manu says : ' Good instruction must be given to 
pupils without unpleasant sensations, and the teacher who 
reverences virtue must use sweet and gentle words. If a 
scholar is guilty of a fault, his instructor may punish him 
with severe words, and threaten that on the next offence he 
wiU give him blows ; and, if the fault is committed in cold 
weather, the teacher may dowse him with cold water.' 

The elementary schools (adventure schools) of post-chris- 
tian times, were, like many in ancient Greece and Italy, held 
in the open air, the pupils sitting round the teacher under 
trees in front of a house ; and when the weather was bad, in 
a covered shed. In arithmetic, only the merest elements 
were taught. Writing, with which instruction in reading 
was closely connected, was first practised in the sand, then 
with an iron style on palm leaves ; and finally on plane-tree 
leaves with a kind of ink. But all this elementary education 
(as far as I can ascertain) belongs to the period after the 
birth of Christ. In the school, it was a common practice for 
a more advanced pupil to point out the letters to a beginner. 
They also heard each other their lessons. It was thus largely 
a system of mutual instruction. Dr. Bell took his monitorial 
system from what he saw at Madras. 



N'oTB. — The education of India b)' Great Britain can of course 
teach us little which is not better taught by the system of instruc- 
tion in our own country. It is simply an attempt to plant British 
education in a foreign soil. It is an exotic. The native dialects 
p,re taught and natives largely employed. This British system is 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 177 

based on a despatch of Sir Charles Wood, dated July 19, 1854. 
The main principle of the despatch was that European knowledge 
sliould be diffused through the languages understood by the great 
mass of the people, but that the teaching of English should always 
be combined with careful attention to the study of the vernacular 
languages. With regard to the wealthier classes, it was declared 
that the time had arrived for the establishment of universities in 
India, conferring degrees, and based on the model of the University 
of London. They were not to be places of education, but to test 
the value of education obtained elsewhere, and to confer degrees in 
arts, law, medicine, and civil engineering. Such universities have 
accordingly been established in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay ; 
and since 1859 Government schools have been opened for the 
instruction of all classes of the Indian people. In each Presidency 
there is now a director of public instruction, assisted by school 
inspectors, one of whom has under his care one circle or subdivision 
of the province. There are also colleges (both government and 
missionary) which prepare for the university examinations. Normal 
schools for the training of teachers have also been established, and 
attempts are being made to spread female education. 

It is stated in Chambers' 'Cyclopaedia' (1892) that there are 
now in all 134,000 educational institutions of one kind or another 
in India. 

Authoriiics : In addition to encyclopaedias and references to various authors, 
I have relied largely on Dutt's History of Civilisation in Ancient India ; 
Hegel's Philosophy of History; Dmiekev''s History of Antiquity ; Monier Wil- 
liams's Indian Wisdom ; Max Miiller, On the Origin of Religion, and refer- 
ences to his other writings ; Tiele's Outlines of Ancient Religions ; The Gospel 
of Buddha, by Paul Carus ; References to the writings of Rhys Davids. 



12 



(B) THE MEDO-PEESIANS 

In dealing with ancient Persia, we have to include as part of 
the same nationality — Media to the north-west and Bactria 
to the north-east of Persia proper or Iran, both of which 
after a period of independence formed part of the Persian 
empire. As the word Iran denotes, the race was Aryan ; 
and indeed it is this fact which gives the Medo-Per- 
sians special interest to us.^ They are called Eranians to dis- 
tinguish them from the Hindu branch of the primitive 
Aryans. 

Speaking without minute regard to geographical limits, 
this branch of the Aryan race occupied the country lying 
between the Caspian Sea on the north and the Persian Gulf 
on the south, and they were bounded on the east and south- 
east by modern Afghanistan and Beloochistan, while on the 
west the mountain range of Zagros separated them from 
the Mesopotaraian valley within which the Babylonian 
and Assyrian empires had their seats. The country is 
a table-land intersected with beautiful and rich valleys. 
Where it descends to the sea on the south it is desert ; on 
the north, where it descends towards the Caspian, it is moist 
and warm and abounding in vegetation. Rich and various 
as are the products of much of Medo-Persia, a great part of 
it is barren. Its rivers are rapid and many of them pour 
down a great volume of water, but scarcely one can be said 
to be navigable. Physically, then, we find here a home for 
a race in which there are necessarily — owing to the exist- 
ence of a high table-land and numerous deep valleys and 
the decline towards seas on the north and south — much 
variety of climate, production, and scenery, and at the same 

1 Media was the leading power up to 558 B.C., when it was conquered by 
Persia, of which it long remained the most important province. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 179 

time not of so large an area as to exclude any portion of the 
inhabitants from the various influences of the whole and 
from that sense of unity which is essential to all successful 
polities. 

If the physical characteristics of a home can influence t]ie 
character of a people we may safely say that irregularity of 
surface and climatic variation will have a potent effect. In 
a country, too, much of which called on man for a struggle 
with nature — a struggle, however, by no means hopeless — 
the seeds of an originally vigorous and vivacious character 
would be nurtured. Nature was not so large and oppressive 
as in India where man lived in a moist, torrid, and relaxing 
climate, and was overpowered by the mass and prodigality 
of natural forms. Although the physical circumstances 
of a nation are powerless to make it, they must largely 
modify its natural racial predisposition, while they profoundly 
influence the character of its industrial activities and much 
of its political history. 

But it is the breed of men which occupies any portion of 
the earth's surface that determines the historical drama which 
is to be there enacted far more, probably, than any other 
fact. The Medo-Persians belonged to our own blood : that 
is to say, they were Aryans, and gave this name to what are 
otherwise called the ' Indo-European ' races. On the north- 
west the Medes, and on the north-east their fellow- Aryans of 
Bactria constituted, with the Persai of the table-land and the 
rich valleys, the Persian ^ people ethnologically : these three 
must be regarded as racially one ; but all were mixed with 
prior Turanian or Uro- Altaic tribes.^ 

' The first great wave of Aryan emigration,' says Professor 
Sayce,^ 'which had resulted in the establishment of the 
European nations, had been followed by another wave which 
first carried the Hindus into the Punjab, and then the 

1 I use the word Persian to include all these. 

2 To what extent the Aryan element had overpowered the Uro- Altaic ele- 
ment in Media is as yet uncertain. 

^ Ancient Empires of the East. 



180 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Iranian populations into the vast districts of Bactria and 
Ariana. Mountains and deserts checked for a time their 
further progress, but at length a number of tribes, each under 
its own chiefs, crept along the southern shores of the Caspian 
to the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, and these tribes 
were known in later history as the Aryan Medes and 
Persians.' 

The Persai spoke an Aryan tongue — called Zend, philo- 
logically connected with the tongues of Europe. The sacred 
writings were in tliis tongue and are known as the Zend- 
Avesta. What remains of these is only part of a large body 
of sacred literature. When the Persian empire, as distinct 
from the kingdom of Persia, rose into power, on the ruins of 
the Assyrian empire in the sixth century B.C., the pure 
original language was already greatly modified.^ 

The accounts of the rise of the Persian empire are very 
difficult to understand, especially since the discovery of the 
inscription by Cyrus, the founder. It would appear, how- 
ever, that Persia had been gradually consolidating itself while 
yet under the suzerainty of Media, and that a portion of 
Elam on the west, called Anshan, had been incorporated with 
Persia. When Cyrus arose, and as king of Elam, but him- 
self of Persian descent, conquered Media, he with singular 
rapidity reduced not only Media but Bactria, and also the 
ancient seats of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. He 
then carried his conquests to the west of Asia Minor, and 
even to the Scythian country of the Oxus where, it is said, 
he met his death.^ 

1 A further stage of degeneration dated from the conquest of Alexander 
tlie Great in 331 B.C. onwards ; and now we have modern Persian so power- 
fully influenced by the Mohammedan conquest in 651 A.D. as to consist largely 
— to the extent, it is said, of nearly one-half — of Arabic vocables. We have 
to do only with ancient Persia. 

2 The rapid rise of the Medo-Persian empire is one of the most remarkable 
facts in Orieutal history. But it can be partially understood if we bear in 
mind that the Medes had been long growing into a commanding position as 
a military power. They had united with the Babylonians to overthrow 
Nineveh and break the Assyrian power for ever. Meanwhile they had been 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 181 

During the absence of Cambyses confirming his father's 
conquests, the non-Aryan element in Media rebelled. After 
the suicide (?) of the king in Egypt, Darius Hystaspes and 
the leading Aryan nobles extinguished the revolt, re-estab- 
lished the reformed Aryan religion — Mazdeism or Zoroas- 
trianism, B.C. 521, and rebuilt the temples of Ormazd. After 
putting down numerous revolts of the people that had been 
conquered by Cyrus, Darius was able to establish the head- 
quarters of his empire at Susa and to organise it. Mean- 
while the extension of the empire went on rapidly till it 
touched the Punjab on the east and Macedonia on the west. 
At the latter point and on the shores of Asia Minor, the 
Persian and Greek met in conflict with ultimate results 
known to all. The empire, however, sustained itself in full 
vigour till its subjugation by Alexander in 331 B.C. It was 
a despotism governed by means of satraps ; but local autonomy 
was everywhere conceded — the satraps merely representing 
the Great King, and having a military colleague and a 
council with an army. Centralisation of government was 
an almost unmixed blessing in those times, because it was 
only under one supreme sovereign that nations could live in 
peace and civilisation advance. So regarded, the Medo- 
Persian empire was a boon to the nations from the Mediter- 
ranean to Afghanistan, and from the Oxus to the Persian 
Gulf, and an important factor in the general history of the 
world. It was an immense advance as a humane and mor- 
alising agency on the barbarous empire of the Assyrians. 

One of the most suggestive indications of the Persian 
natural disposition was to be found in that characteristic of 
their imperial administration to which I have adverted 
above — the recognition of local autonomy. They did not 

extending their own influence to the west, and were virtually masters of the 
country as far as Asia Minor. Then Nebuchadnezzar had revived the ancient 
Babylonian greatness, and had subdued the south and west as far as Egypt 
and the Mediterranean. Accordingly, when Cyrus, at the head of the 
Elamites and Persians, came on the field, the subduing of Media and Babylon 
carried with it, as a consequence, a large empire already reduced to 
subjection. 



182 PRE-CamSTiAN educatioi^ 

impose themselves unduly on subject nations. They organ- 
ised a fixed tribute, and forbore to make arbitrary exactions. 
They had great toleration of foreign customs and of other 
religious systems than their own. This characteristic of the 
Persian imperial sway is worthy of notice as contributing to 
a true estimate of the character of the governing race. In 
repressing rebellions they were severe, but not so in other 
circumstances. 

Among themselves there were seven tribal princes under 
the king, and next to them seven supreme judges and a large 
staff of officials. The government was essentially bureaucra- 
tic, and all were subject to the despotic authority of the 
Great King.^ 

Social and Civil Relations. — Passing from the politi- 
cal to the social system, note first that here in Persia caste, 
if we except the hereditary Magian priesthood, was not 
recognised as it was among the fellow- Aryans of India. All 
may move freely, and, subject always to the absolute author- 
ity of the Great King, work out their own lives. The policy 
of the king was, it is said, to gather the great nobles round 
his court and to reward generously all who did service to the 
State. Every one, even the meanest, was kept conscious of 
the national unity and felt himself to have a share in the 
national activity. This community of feeling was strong; 
for example, in their prayers when offering sacrifices the 
Persian asked blessings on the Persian people generally, and 
on himself only as included in the nation. The Persians were, 
as compared with other Oriental races, virtually a free people, 
though under a despotic form of government.^ 

1 I rely (not wholly, but largely) on the Greek writers, because there are 
no other sources. Have not some contemporary Orientalists occasionally 
shown a want of discriminating judgment in discrediting the Greeks ? 

2 Doubtless Herodotus is not always to be trusted, but his description of 
the Persians seems to me, with all due respect to Professor Sayce, to ring true. 
We may discredit his history of Persia without doubting the impression the 
people and their customs made on him, even although he never reached as far 
as the Persian capital. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 183 

Persian Character. — The disposition of the Persian was 
towards equity, mercifuhiess of administration, and mildness 
of character. ' The king,' says Herodotus, ' shall not put 
anyone to death for a single fault ; and none of the Persians 
shall visit a single fault in a slave with any extreme penalty ; 
but in every case the services of the offender shall be set 
against his misdoings, and if the latter be found to outweigh 
the former, the aggrieved party shall then proceed to punish- 
ment.' They were also a kindly and domestic people. Chil- 
dren had to yield absolute obedience to their parents, just as 
citizens had to their rulers, it is true ; but so convinced were 
they of the sacredness of the family tie as founded in love 
and reverence that they maintained ' that never yet did any- 
one kill his father or his mother, but in all such cases they 
are quite sure that, if matters were sifted to the bottom, it 
would be found that the child was either a changeling or 
else the fruit of adultery, for it is not likely, they say, 
that the real father should perish by the hands of the child.' 
(Herod.) We see here a strong family feeling resting on 
humane conceptions. 

Further, when we contemplate the Persian at his best (in- 
cluding, as we here may, under that designation, the Medes 
and Bactrians), we cannot but be impressed with a certain 
freshness and nobility of mind among them. A high spirit 
and a pleasant and aff'able temper are conspicuous : in these 
respects they form a marked contrast to the Egyptian, Semi- 
tic, and Chinese races, and even to their cognates the Hindus. 
We seem suddenly, at a point not more than a few hundred 
miles west from the basin of the Indus, and as we reach the 
bracing table-land, to encounter a new phase of humanity 
altogether — surpassingly interesting to us because we recog- 
nise in it a distinctive European type. The air we breathe is 
no longer stagnant as in China, no longer heavy with mois- 
ture and warmth as in India, nor so dry, stimulating, and 
exciting as among the Semitic races, but breezy and health- 
ful. We already feel half way to Greece ; for along with 
their greater freshness of mind, nobility of nature, and equity 



184 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

of disposition, we find in the Persian a friendliness and a 
Hellenic grace of courtesy which charm us, and of which 
Herodotus thus speaks : ' When they meet each other in the 
streets, you may know if the persons meeting are of equal 
rank by the following token. If they are of equal rank, then, 
instead of speaking, they kiss each other on the lips. In the 
case where one is inferior to the other, the kiss is given on 
the cheek ; where the difference of rank is great, the inferior 
prostrates himself on the ground.' A mark of their openness 
of mind is to be found in the readiness with which they 
accepted foreign customs. 'There is no nation which so 
readily adopts foreign customs. Thus they have taken the 
dress of the Medes, considering it superior to their own, and 
in war they wear the Egyptian breastplate. As soon as they 
hear of any luxury they immediately make it their own.' 
' Of the family of mankind,' says a historian,^ ' which claimed, 
not unjustly, the distinctive name of "noble" (Arya),^ the 
Persians formed one of the finest types. When we first meet 
with them in history they are a race of hardy mountaineers, 
brave in war, rude in manners, simple in their habits, abstain- 
ing from wine, and despising all the luxuries of food and 
dress. Though uncultivated in art and science, they, at a 
more advanced period of their national life, were distinguished 
for an intellectual ability, a lively wit, a generous, passionate, 
and poetical temperament — qualities, however, which easily 
degenerated into vanity and want of perseverance. Their 
military spirit was kept in full vigour by their hardy moun- 
tain life, their simple and temperate habits, and the strict 
discipline in which they were trained from their youth up.' 
' In the reign of Cyrus,' says Plato (' Laws,' iii. 694) ' the 
Persians were freemen and also lords of many others : the 
rulers gave a share of freedom to the subjects, and being 
treated as equals, the scldiers were on better terms with their 
generals, and showed themselves more ready in the hour of 

1 Philip Smith in his History of the Ancient JForld. 

- Derived from the ancient name of the territory Ariana. 1 am not aware 
that nobility has anything to do with it. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 185 

danger. And if there was any wise counsellor among them, 
he imparted his wisdom to the public, for the kmg was not 
jealous, but allowed him full liberty of speech, and gave 
honour to those who were able to be his counsellors in any- 
thing, and allowed all men equally to participate in wisdom. 
And the nation waxed in all respects because there was free- 
dom, and friendship, and communion of soul among them.' 
(Jowett's trans.) 

Religion and Ethics. — The religion of the Persians 
when they first appear in history in connection with the 
conquests of Cyrus probably differed little from the Vedic 
form of Hinduism. The elements were worshipped as 
spirits. The specific North Aryan development which is 
called Mazdeism or Zoroastrianism came from Media, accord- 
ing to Darmesteter (more probably Bactria, according to 
Tiele) and was in the hands of a sacerdotal tribe called the 
Magi. The conquest of Media led to the adoption of Maz- 
deism by the ruling family or families in Persia. It may 
be said with truth that the mass of the people never rose 
to a conception of the principles of Mazdeism — at least 
during the period which concerns us here. On the other 
hand, it was practically the belief of the leading families, and 
through these it influenced the people and determined the 
general current of religious faith among them. In auto- 
cratic societies the belief of the few dominates the mass 
much more than in countries possessing what we call a 
free constitution. We are entitled accordingly to speak of 
Mazdeism as a powerful educative force among the Medo- 
Persians long before 521 B.C. down to the fall of the Persian 
empire in 333 B.C., and as exhibiting the mental tendency 
of the Persian race. 

The fundamental idea of the national and State religion 
of Medo-Persia was that a pure One Spirit was creator and 
sustainer of all. We see in this a resemblance to the 
higher and later form of Judaism. Ahura-Mazda or Lord 
all-knowing (Ormazd), was the name of the Supreme God. 



186 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

But even after he was recognised as supreme, mucli of tlie 
Aryan belief in spirits of the elements, and in other spirits 
good and evil, remained active among the people. The good 
spirits were now, however, regarded as subordinate agencies 
of the Supreme God : the evil spirits were the offspring of 
Ahriman, the evil one. Ahriman, the source of evil, was not 
self-originated, but arose out of the conflict of forces when 
Ormazd created the material world out of nothing. Ormazd 
is all-wise, creator of the spiritual as well as the earthly life, 
the lord of the whole universe who will ultimately van- 
quish the evil that is incidental to creation. He is know- 
ledge, and the ' One that knows,' he is ' Weal ' and the 
' One that is beneficent.' This lofty religious conception was 
attributed to a religious reformer, Zarathustra or Zoroaster,^ 
and handed down by the hereditary priesthood or tribe called 
the Magi, already referred to. Among the good spirits were 
the gods of light and fire, and the latter appeared in all Maz- 
dean worship both in its priestly and popular form. The 
sacred writings are known as the Zend-Avesta. ^ 

' The Persian religion,' says Hegel,^ ' is the religion of 
light. The source of light is not identified with nature as 
one with it, but is rather regarded as that which creates 
and vitalises. In its human mental relations this light is 
wisdom, goodness, virtue, purity, truth — in its physical 
relations it is that which ntalises and makes beautiful — 

1 It cannot be said that the ancient hymns which survive show that 
Zoroaster taught the doctrine of Ahriman as a Being, but this was the natural 
outcome of his cosmic view. 

2 'Avesta' means the law; 'Zend,' commentary or explanation. We 
ought, strictly speaking, not to talk of the Zend language, but of the Avesta 
language. The Zend-Avesta- — the collection of fragments which we now 
have — consists of the Vendidad, a compilntion of religious laws and mythical 
tales ; the Visperad, a collection of litanies for the sacrifice ; and the Yasna, 
also composed of litanies and of five hymns or Ga (written in a special 
dialect older than the general language of the Avesta). As a whole, the 
Zend-Avesta bears more likeness to a prayer-book tlian a Bible. It is 
only fragments that remain to us of the old original text and of what was 
added from time to time by the Magian priesthood. (From Darmesteter in 
Max Miiller's series.) 

^ In his Philosophy of History, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 187 

physical light — the light of the sun, which is still wor- 
shipped by the Parsees — the modern representatives of the 
Zend religion — as the symbol of intellectual, and the source 
of physical, light.' Ormazd, the lord of life and light, him- 
self emerges as pure spirit from the ' unlimited all,' and with 
him there is also Ahriman, the spirit (or principle) of dark- 
ness, decay, and death, spirit of evil, source of all wrong as a 
necessary incident of the act of creation. Ahriman is not 
the equal of Ormazd — only for a time does he maintain a 
seemingly equal warfare, to be finally subdued. Men as 
individuals are engaged in this warfare, and have to fight 
for light against darkness, good against evil, truth against 
falsehood, purity against impurity; but not hopelessly. 
Ormazd was above all. We see in this religion an expres- 
sion of the highest type of Persian thought which could 
not fail to react on the individual life powerfully. 

The doctrine of personal immortality was taught. After 
death the wicked fall into the underworld, there to be tor- 
mented by evil spirits, the good are received into the Abode 
of Song, the dwelling place of Ormazd and the saints. But 
a day of renovation even for the wicked will come, when, 
by the discipline of fire, all creatures will be refined. 

It is easy to understand that even a religion as pure as this 
in conception might degenerate into a worship of the ele- 
ments, or rather retain an ancient element worship and spirit 
worship as a parallel and popular system. The Magi — a 
powerful hereditary class, represented, as priests in those 
ancient nationalities necessarily did, the philosophy, science, 
and wisdom of their nation. Among them, as interpreters of 
the ancient writings, there seem to have been schools of 
thought — some inclining to the concrete and elemental 
primitive religion, as opposed to the pure and Eranian spirit- 
doctrine. But even among the former was an absence of all 
that savoured of idolatry. Herodotus, who saw and under- 
stood only the popular side of the Persian religion which 
contained some old Aryan elements, says : ' The customs 
which I know the Persians to observe are the following. 



188 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

They have no image of the gods, nor temples, nor altars, and 
consider the use of them a sign of folly. This comes, I 
think, from their not believing the gods to have the same 
nature with men, as the Greeks imagine. Their wont, how- 
ever, is to ascend the summits of the loftiest mountains, and 
there offer sacrifice to Jupiter, which is the name they give 
to the whole circuit of the firmament. To these gods the 
Persians offer sacrifice in the following manner. They raise 
no altar, light no fire, pour no libations : there is no sound 
of the flute, no putting on of chaplets, no consecrated barley- 
cake ; but the man who wishes to sacrifice brings his victim 
to a spot of ground which is pure from pollution and there 
calls upon the name of the god to whom he intends to offer.^ 
It is usual to have the turban encircled with a wreath, most 
commonly of myrtle. The sacrificer is not allowed to pray 
for blessings on himself alone, but he prays for the welfare 
of the king and of the whole Persian people, among whom 
he is of necessity included. He cuts the victim in pieces, 
and having boiled the flesh, he lays it out upon the tenderest 
herbage he can find, trefoil especially. When all is ready 
one of the Magi comes forward and chants a hymn, which, 
they say, recounts the origin of the gods. It is not lawful to 
offer sacrifice unless there is a Magus present. After wait- 
ing a short time, the sacrificer carries the flesh of the victim 
away with him, and makes whatever use of it he pleases.' ^ 

1 There was a fire, but the victims were not burned in it but before it, and 
afterwards eaten. 

2 At what date Zoroastriauism reached its full development is uncertain. 
The gradually-growing writings and traditions were formulated, though still 
in a rudimentary form doubtless, probably about 521 B.C. Some would 
assign a more modern date : on the other hand, inscriptions have come to 
light only two or three months ago (1895) which bear the name of Ormazd 
and Ahriman and must have been cut out on stone about 480 B.C. The Zoroas- 
trian reformation of the old Aryanism must have begun about 900 B.C. (some 
experts say 1400 B.C.) the sacred writings gradually growing in bulk till for- 
mulated at the date just given. The Zend-Avesta, as we notv have it, dates 
from about the 4th century A.D. The Medes at the time of their conquest by 
Cyrus seem to have followed the primitive Aryan religion, mixed with Semitic 
and Turanian elements, the worshippers of Ormazd being only a party in the 
nation. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 189 

What chiefly concerns us, as students of the education of 
a people, especially where we have no specific educational 
institutions, is to bring into view the religious idea as the 
ultimate expression of the national life. That a religious 
system such as we have briefly described affords a marked 
contrast to that of other nations is evident. It was supremely 
ethical and also free from idolatry. It gave a distinct value 
to the individual personality, and this, though it might be 
but imperfectly apprehended by the masses. Absorption or 
annihilation of his personality in Brahma is the last idea of 
perfected bliss which would have occurred to a genuine Per- 
sian ! Nor would the idea of stern divine law and a rigid 
moral contract with God oppress him as it did the Jew, who 
realised in God an infinite personality meeting his own finite 
personality on certain definite legal terms. On the contrary, 
the Persian seems to have been a happy, easy-going mortal : 
his birthdays were days of festivity. His life was to be a 
struggle to extend the kingdom of Light, but withal, a cheerful 
and a hopeful struggle. 

The supreme virtues were — as we might expect where 
the personality was strong and the religion was a religion of 
light and truth as opposed to darkness and error — truth- 
speaking, and courage. Not only were they required to 
practise these virtues, but they were enjoined to guard their 
tongues. In the words of Herodotus : ' They hold it unlaw- 
ful to talk of anything that it is unlawful to do. The most 
disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie ; 
the next worst to owe a debt, because, among other reasons, 
the debtor is obliged to tell lies.' Personal purity and the 
preservation of the purity of water were also incumbent on 
the Persian. ' They never defile a river, nor even wash their 
hands in one ; nor will they allow others to do so, as they 
have a great reverence for rivers.' 

We know so little of the educational methods of the Per- 
sians that it would be unjustifiable in me to dwell so long 
on their national characteristics were it not that in the edu- 
cation of the human race generally, and as marking a step 



190 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

in its progress, the Persians are to be regarded as a potent 
factor, and were it not also that the current beliefs, rehgious 
and ethical, constituted their education. 

EDUCATION OF THE ANCIENT PERSIANS 

There was no educational system in Persia ; but after what 
I have said above, we can easily conceive the national result 
at which the education of family life and public institutions 
aimed. This it is easy to infer from the sketch I have given 
of the manners, life, and ethical religion of the people. 
Perhaps the following view of the life of the boy may be 
accepted as substantially correct.^ 

The education of a Persian was considered to begin at 
his fifth (some say his seventh) year and continue till his 
twenty-fourth. To the seventh year the child was left 
entirely in the hands of the women of the household. ' Up 
to the fifth year,' Herodotus tells us, ' they are not allowed 
to come into the sight of their father, but pass their lives 
with the women. This is done that if the child die young, 
the father may not be afflicted with the loss.' Of good and 
bad the child was not supposed to be capable of knowing 
anything. Obedience was his sole duty. It was considered 
wrong to beat a child before his seventh year. The family 
upbringing seems to have been genial and kindly. 

From the fifth year, Herodotus says, the public instruction 
of the boys began. There is no evidence that any class, save 
what would correspond to our upper or wealthier classes, had 
any education beyond that which national customs, institu- 
tions, and religious beliefs and rites would necessarily give 
to all citizens. We are not to accept what Xenophon tells 
us in his romance. We know, however, from Strabo and 

^ Some write with fluency and confidence on the ancient Persian educa- 
tion, having apparently in their eye Xenophon's Cyropcedia (especially i. 9), 
forgetting that it is a romance, to be accepted perhaps in its spirit but cer- 
tainly not in any other respect. Much might be extracted from the Avesta 
as to the regulation of domestic life, but it is difficult to date what has sur- 
vived, and we are concerned only with the pre-christian. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 191 

the general evidence of antiquity that the boys of the higher 
classes were brought up together under men of gravity and 
reputation at the court of the great king, and also at the 
lesser courts of the great nobles and provincial governors. 
In these central and departmental court-schools they were 
trained in shooting with the bow, riding, the use of the jave- 
lin, and other military exercises, and in the course of this 
instruction great attention was paid to their education in 
truthfulness and self-control. The story of noble deeds was 
conveyed through the national traditions. The young men 
were rendered hardy by the severity of their physical exer- 
cise. We may perhaps see in such schools an anticipation 
of the mediaeval schools of chivalry. In the first book of the 
' Anabasis ' (which is not to be rejected because the ' Cyro- 
paidia ' is a romance) Xenophon says of Cyrus the Younger, 
that ' when he was receiving his education with his brother 
and the other youths, he was considered to surpass them all 
in everything.' ' All the sons of the Persian nobles,' he 
adds, ' are educated at the Eoyal palace, where they have an 
opportunity of learning many a lesson of virtuous conduct, 
but can see or hear nothing disgraceful. Here the boys see 
some honoured by the king and others degraded, so that in 
their very childhood they learn to govern and to obey. Here 
Cyrus first of all showed himself most remarkable for mod- 
esty among those of his own age, and for paying more ready 
obedience to his elders than even those who were inferior to 
him in station, and next he was noted for his fondness for 
horses and for managing them in a superior manner. They 
found him, too, very desirous of learning and most assiduous 
in practising the warlike exercises of archery and hurling 
the javelin. When it suited his age he grew exceedingly 
fond of the chase and of braving dangers in encounters with 
wild beasts.' Plato, again, in his ' Alcibiades,' speaks of the 
instruction of the sons of the kings in the wisdom of Zoro- 
aster as well as in justice, temperance, and courage. 

Prayer and the holy doctrines of the priests were learned 
(doubtless from oral and personal teaching, not from writ- 



192 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

ings) ; and somewhere about fifteen years of age the boys 
were invested with the holy girdle (made out of seventy-two 
threads of camel hair or wool, and never laid aside day or 
night, as a protection against the Devas or evil spirits) with 
many ceremonies. On this occasion the young Persian, after 
reciting portions of the Avesta which he had been care- 
fully taught, took upon himself a vow to follow the law of 
Zoroaster. It was at the fifteenth year that the boy was 
held to enter youth, that the family bands were relaxed, and 
that he became a servant of the State. In his twenty -fifth 
year the youth was looked upon as a man and citizen, and 
was subject to all duties in peace and war, till his fiftieth. 

The highest education was for the hereditary Magian 
priesthood alone, but it does not seem to have embraced much 
more (so far as we know) than the traditionary religious 
writings which were numerous. The Persians were not an 
intellectual people Hke the Egyptians, Chaldees, Hindus, and 
Chinese. Life, with all its activities, was dear to them. But 
it might be held that it was precisely this want of abstract 
intellectual interest that helped to make their imperial power 
so short-lived. 

The Semitic and Hamitic races were religious and devout. 
Their religions were their political and social bonds. But 
they all were characterised by a subjection of the spirit 
of man to divine powers — powers, too, not always of very 
humane attributes. Being superstitious, these races were 
slaves to the unseen; and they were all, save the Jews, 
idolaters. It was otherwise with the Persian. Morality 
and virility were the governing ideas. Personality and the 
responsibility of each individual for the diffusion of good 
might not be national characteristics, but they underlay the 
national character. Their religion taught them reverence — 
a reverence extended to the great king who was governor 
under Auramazda ; but this reverence, while unquestionably 
it was subjection, was not slavishness. The individual had 
to fight with and for Auramazda and the kingdom of Light. 
Truthfulness, justice, and courage were accordingly, as I have 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 193 

said, the cardinal virtues, and by these characteristics the 
Persians were, if we may believe history and tradition, gen- 
erally distinguished : in these they educated their children. 
The distinctive characteristic of the Persian education is its 
devotion to physical and ethical training. Education in our 
modern sense did not exist, either as instruction or discipline, 
outside the physical and ethical elements. It does not appear 
that the women had any save domestic training, but it is 
important to note that they held a higher position in the 
family Hfe than was usual in the East. 

As to method. — Where there is no instruction in litera- 
ture, &c., there is no room for method as applied to intellec- 
tual acquisition and discipline. The method of moral training 
was the mingling of the young with their seniors, on which 
Crete and Sparta and early Eome also mainly relied. 

This is all that can be said, with even an approximation to 
accuracy, about the educational machinery of the Persians. 
It was manifestly only the well-to-do who participated fully 
in the national training — possibly only the leading tribe of 
the Pasargadse. All others would be dependent on domestic 
life and the current of rehgious and ethical belief and 
tradition. 

The significance of Persian life and education lies in the 
combination of a free personality witli an intense national 
feeling. I am not at all disposed to accept the sweeping 
estimate of their character which approves itself to Professor 
Sayce, in face of the universal tradition regarding them, sup- 
ported as that is by the doctrines of their religion and the 
statements of the Greeks. In the mere fact of personality 
we have the beginning of an ideal aim for the personal life. 
Individual courage, truthfulness, and purity were constituents 
of this ideal ; and the ideal of man was based on the attri- 
butes of God. Man becomes, under the Persian conception, 
a personal factor in the world-order. Caste, with its depress- 
ing and restrictive influences and superstitions and their 
accompaniment of slavish fears, is not compatible with these 

13 



194 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

conceptions. Accordingly, I am disposed to regard the Per- 
sian as the true starting-point of the specifically Aryan char- 
acter, and as marking the transition from the Semitic-Oriental 
to the Hellenic type of life. With a sense of personality 
there comes into existence freedom and many consequent 
virtues. The Persian thus seems to bridge the gulf between 
the Oriental and the European. And yet he was an 
Oriental. 

It is not our business to trace the brief history of the 
Medo-Persian empire. When one considers, however, the 
high military and healthy ethical characteristics of the Per- 
sian when he was an all-conquering force, it is permitted to 
us to wonder at his rapid degradation and fall. With so 
excellent an ethical basis of national life, how came it that 
the court, in less than one hundred years from the death of 
Cyrus, had developed all the vices which are popularly asso- 
ciated with Oriental despotisms ? The imperial organisation 
was perhaps too lax to be permanent, but the degradation of 
the Persian character wants explanation. Personal vanity 
and love of luxury do not seem to explain everything. May 
we not believe that had there been an organised education of 
a considerable section of the people on the basis of Mazdeism, 
the empire, if reduced to manageable limits, might have held 
its own even against Alexander, who gave it its final blow ? 
Or was it that the religion itself had become debased, and 
that the degeneracy was due to a light-hearted unbelief, 
generated by luxury, which prepared the way for political 
dissolution ? 

To conclude : — The nation which was most nearly allied 
to the Persian in its religious conceptions was the Jewish, 
and it is not impossible that the tribes deported to Media in 
the first exile may have influenced Zoroastrianism. But 
spite of a certain community of belief, there was all the con- 
trast which the Aryan and Semitic race-characters would 
lead us to expect. On the one hand we see slavery to a tech- 
nical legalism, a sacred covenant ; on the other personal free- 
dom and a freely discharged responsibility. We may even say 



TBE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 195 

that the Persian idea of God and his relation to the world 
and the life of man was purer, more universal, and more 
pleasing than the Jewish. God attracts and does not coerce 
with threatenings. On the other hand we have in the edu- 
cated Jew a far more intense conception of the moral element 
in God and of the absoluteness of Duty to Law. With the 
Persian the actual personality of God is lost in a principle, 
and the moral relation of God to the world and man is more 
generalised and less definite, and yet quite capable of being 
appropriated by an intelligent community. In the Persian 
idea there was a possibility of progress, and it is difficult to 
understand why the nation did not advance. 

The reader who has accompanied us thus far will see that 
new elements of life enter the world with the Aryan race. 
The two branches of that race of which we have been speak- 
ing exhibit the two leading characteristics of their European 
brethren ; in the one we find a certain simplicity of faith 
and morals accompanied with freedom of spirit, freshness, 
and ' go ' ; in the other, profound philosophic contemplation 
and literary excellence. Both these characteristics we find 
united in the race which now compels our attention, and 
which must arrest it much longer than any other ; for in it 
we find the genesis of all subsequent human activity in phil- 
osophy, literature, and the arts that adorn and elevate the life 
of man. 

Authorities : — Anabasis and Cyropccdia of Xenophon ; Herodotus ; Plato ; 
Strabo ; Sir H. Rawlinson's appendices and discussions in his translation of 
Herodotus ; Ranke's History of the World; Rawlinson's Five Eastern Mon- 
archies ; Schmidt's History of Education; Hegel's Philosophy of History ; 
Sayce's Ancient Empires of the East ; Vaux's Persia ; Tiele's Outlines of 
Religions ; Duucker's History of Antiquity ; with references to many other 
sources, such as Darmesteter — especially his introduction to the translation 
of the Zend-Avesta. 



a — THE HELLENIC EACE i 
CHAPTEE I 

GENERAL HELLENIC CHARACTEEISTICS 

Assuming that the reader has already a fair acquaintance 
with Hellenic history, I here restrict myself to the exhibition 
of those great and leading characteristics of life, religion, and 
art, to which it is absolutely necessary to refer if we would 
understand the education of the Greeks. 

I have in view the highest type of the Hellenic spirit — 
the Athenian. 

Look first at the map of the Eastern Mediterranean. The 
physical characteristics of the home of the Hellenic races — 
the variety of scenery which was to be found in a land 
broken up, as theirs was, by mountain, stream, and sea, and 
the pure and hilarious influences of the atmosphere, were all 
of a kind to promote the development of a cheerful, bright, 
life-loving people. The early separation of the common 
stock into tribes speaking different dialects (Doric, ^olic, 
Ionic, and Attic), and the establishment on the shores of the 
Mediterranean of numerous autonomous little kingdoms 
tended to establish a difference, and in many cases a mutual 
antagonism, of interests. Hence, in consequence of the 

1 Important Dates in the History of Greece. — Trojan War, 1183 B.C. (?) ; 
Homer about 950 and Hesiod about 850 B.C. ; Spartan power dominant in the 
Peloponnesus, 650 B.C. Athens — Legislation of Solon, 590 B.C. ; Persian in- 
vasion and Battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. ; Invasion by Xerxes, burning of 
Athens, and battle of Salamis, 480 B.C. ; battle of Platsea, 479 B.C. Suprem- 
acy of Athens. Peloponnesian war, 431 to 404 B.C. ; Defeat of Athens and 
supremacy of Sparta, 404 B.C. ; Spartan wars with Persia and Darius : divi- 
sions of Greece: ascendency of Philip of Macedon over Greece, 338 B.C.; 
Alexander the Great. Greece made a Roman province, 146 B.C. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 197 

numerous centres of civic life, that rapid growth of independ- 
ence and of the spirit of freedom which characterised the 
Greek, and which was, in fact, the beginning of the idea of 
hberty for the whole human race. This tendency to civic 
and personal self-assertion was strengthened by the island 
character of many of the settlements and the activity and 
energy called forth by contest with the sea. It is true that 
freedom and the spirit of independence were innate in the 
Hellenic character ; but they were undoubtedly fostered into 
an almost feverish activity by social, geographical, and 
political conditions. What a contrast do they present to the 
Egyptian, Chinese, and Semitic national communities, and to 
the dreamy and abstract Hindus, their cousins by race ! 

Here among the Greeks you have all the grace and human- 
ity which are noted in their fellow- Aryans the Persians, their 
courage and manliness, their enjoyment of life and of moral ^ 
freedom ; but all these issuing from a deeper nature, instinct 
with a broader human sympathy and, above all, animated by 
an intense intellectuality. In Homer ^ — the first and great- 
est hterary representative of the Hellenic spirit — you have 
all these characteristics so early as about 1000 years B.C. ; for 
Homer seems to have sung somewhere about 180 years after 
the Trojan War, to which the date of 1183 B.C. is usually 
assigned. These poems (which, as has been truly said, form 
the end not the beginning of a poetical period), so rich in 
their humanity, so full of character, of simple and naive, yet 
penetrating, reflection, so abounding in romance, so magnifi- 
cent in their conceptions of the virility of man, so touching 
in their pathos and so overflowing with fulness of life and 
energy, give the key to the Hellenic character. They formed 
the basis of all Greek literature ; nay, we may say of all 
European literature. They were committed to memory by 
the Hellenic boys and studied by the Hellenic youth, who 

1 It does not matter to us, of course, -whether one man wrote the Iliad and 
Odyftsey or not. But, I suppose no one now doubts that these poems were the 
product of many singers, and, if so, their interest and value as the expression 
of the life of a race are increased. 



198 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

saw in Achilles a type of free and warlike Greece, learned 
to revere age and experience in Nestor, to recognise, in tlie 
portraiture of tlie great Agamemnon, the necessity of leader- 
ship even for free men and democrats, and to appreciate the 
oratory and the astute policy of Ulysses — a foreshadowing of 
a potent factor in the life of the interplotting Hellenic States. 
A people with such a start in national life could not but be 
great in arts, literature, and arms, if their racial genius was 
truly represented by their great epos. The teaching fell, as 
we know, on fruitful soil ; and the poems were received and 
cherished as divine, inspired utterances. 

We take the Homeric epos then, as we took the Confucian 
books in the case of China, the Rig- Veda and Code of Manu 
in the case of the Hindu, and the Zend-Avesta in the case of 
the Persian, to be the starting-point of the inner life of the 
Greeks. A natural humanity broad and various, instead of 
religious conceptions, lies at the heart of Greek genius. 
Homer was the first expositor of this humanity, and through 
all Greek and even Eoman education, the Iliad and Odyssey 
formed the minds of the young. 'Boys,' says Professor 
Jebb,i ' learned Homer by heart at school, priests quoted him 
touching the gods, moralists went to him for maxims, states- 
men for arguments, cities for claims to territory or alliance, 
noble houses for the title deeds of their fame.' Even so late 
as Quintilian, in the first century of the Christian era, we 
find the use of Homer and Vergil in the elementary schools 
recommended by the most competent of all educational 
authorities. ' It has accordingly been an excellent custom,' 
he says (i. 8), ' that reading should commence with Homer 
and Vergil, although to understand their merits there is need 
of a maturer judgment ; but for the acquisition of judgment 
there is abundance of time, for they will not be read once 
only. In the meantime let the mind of the pupil be exalted 
with the sublimity of the heroic verse, conceive ardour from 
the magnitude of the subjects, and be imbued with the 
noblest sentiments.' 

^ Primer of Greek Literature. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 199 

It is in the Homeric epos also that we find the earliest 
indications of Hellenic education. In the 9th Book of the 
Iliad, Phoenix, when supplicating Achilles to lay aside his 
wrath, recalls that his father, Peleus, when he sent him to 
the war, committed him to his care. 

I, -whom thy royal father sent as orderer of thy force 

When to Atrides from his court he left thee for this course, 

Yet young, and when in skill of arms thou didst not so abound, 

Nor hadst the habit of discourse that makes men so renowned. 

In all which I was set by him t' instruct thee as my son, 

That thou mightst speak when speech was fit, and do when deeds 

were done ; 
Not sit as dumb for want of words ; idle, for skill to move. 

Iliad, ix. 443, Chapman's translation. 

If we would understand Greece, then, we must start from 
Homer. If we do not read, and, while reading, are not 
quick to feel the charm of the great epics, we shall never 
know anything ahout the great Hellenic race, or the vital 
element in their lives whether in school or at home. 

The most remarkable outcome of Greek genius in political 
and social institutions as well as in art and literature was 
to be found in Athens — 'the eye of Greece.' It is of 
Athens and the Athenians that Thucydides thus speaks 
through the mouth of Pericles, giving us a picture of an 
ideal civic community, which it is not difficult to connect 
with the Homeric conceptions of life : 

' It is true that we are called a democracy, for the admin- 
istration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. 
But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their 
private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised ; 
and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is pre- 
ferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, 
but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but 
a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity 
of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public 



200 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of 
one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what 
he likes ; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though 
harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained 
in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades 
our public acts ; we are prevented from doing wrong by 
respect for authority and for the laws, having an especial 
regard to those which are ordained for the protection of 
the injured, as well as to those unwritten laws which bring 
upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general 
sentiment. 

'And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary 
spirits many relaxations from toil ; we have regular games 
and sacrifices throughout the year; at home the style of 
our life is refined; and the delight which we daily feel 
in all these things helps to banish melancholy. 

'Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the 
whole earth flow in upon us, so that we enjoy the goods 
of other countries as freely as of our own. 

' Then, again, our military training is in many respects 
superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown 
open to the world, and we never expel a foreigner or pre- 
vent him from seeing or learning anything of which the 
secret, if revealed to an enemy, might profit him. We 
rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own 
hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas 
they (the Spartans) from early youth are always undergoing 
laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at 
ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they 
face. 

' Then, we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our 
tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. 
Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when 
there is a real use for it. To avoid poverty with us is no 
disgrace ; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. 
An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he 
takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 201 

are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. 
We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public 
affairs not as a harmless but as a u eless character ; and if 
few of us are originators, we are all sound judges, of a policy. 
The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not dis- 
cussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by 
discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar 
power of thinking before we act and of acting too, whereas 
other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon 
reflection. And they are reaUy to be esteemed the bravest 
spirits who, having the clearest sense, both of the pains 
and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from 
danger. 

' I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the 
individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the 
power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action 
with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing 
and idle word, but truth and fact ; and the assertion is veri- 
fied by the position to which these quahties have raised the 
State. For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her con- 
temporaries is greater than her fame.' (Jowett's translation.) 

Contrast for a moment this picture of a State with that of 
the nations we have been passing under review ! These 
words of Thucydides portray an almost ideal political com- 
munity, towards which, indeed, we hope that our modern 
life is tending. Strange it may seem that a civic constitu- 
tion even though falling short of this ideal, as Athens most 
certainly did, could not sustain itself for ever. The decline 
and fall of Greece, manifest as were the causes, yields 
probably as profound political lessons as the 'Decline and 
Fall of Eome ' even in the hands of the stately and all- 
comprehending Gibbon. 

In connection with the Greek polity, however, let us never 
forget that when we talk of the Greeks, we talk not of the 
whole of the inhabitants of Hellas who spoke Greek, but of the 
aristocracy of free citizens. These rested on a large body of 
slaves who performed all manual and menial work — captives 



202 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

in war, or persons purchased at slave markets or the descen- 
dants of slaves. Though well treated, they had no civic 
rights to speak of. 

Religion. — The earliest Greeks brought with them the 
Aryan religion and there is nothing in the Vedic hymns 
which they would not have accepted. But how different was 
the evolution of the religious sentiment from that which we 
have seen in the Persian and Hindu ! The sacerdotal 
element was in abeyance, and religion partook of the 
humanity of their civil life. There was here no Semitic 
fear, no Egyptian awe, no abasement of human personality 
before an unseen power of possibly sinister intentions. It 
was a worship of the beautiful — of Art, i.e. the ideal in 
nature and human life. Their gods did not symbolise the 
mere powers of nature, and the worship was not an element 
worship, though doubtless it rested on a primaeval adoration 
of the forces and forms of nature — earth, sun, moon, dawn, 
spring, and so forth. The gods as we find them in their 
specific Hellenic development were the perfect expressions 
of huinan thought regarding the powers that worked in nature 
and in man. They were ideals ; and in these ideals they 
truly worshipped the divine element in man; and so they 
may be, in a sense, said to have worshipped a glorified and 
superhuman, but not supernatural, humanity. 

On this subject Hegel says in his ' Philosophy of History ' : 
* It must be observed that the Greek gods are to be regarded 
as individualities, not abstractions, like Knowledge, Unity, 
Time, Heaven, Necessity. Such abstractions do not form 
the substance of these divinities : they are no allegories, no 
abstract beings to which various attributes are attached like 
the Horatian [e.g. dira et sceva necessitas']. As little are 
the divinities symbols, for a symbol is only a sign, an adum- 
bration of something else. The Greek gods express of them- 
selves wliat they are. The eternal repose and clear intelli- 
gence that dignify the head of Apollo is not a symbol, but 
the expression in which spirit manifests itself and shows 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 203 

itself present. The gods are personalities, concrete individu- 
alities : an allegorical being has no qualities, but is itself one 
quality and no more. The gods are moreover special char- 
acters, since in each of them one peculiarity predominates as 
the characteristic one; but it would be vain to try to bring 
this circle of characters into a system. Zeus perhaps may 
be regarded as ruling the other gods, but not with substantial 
power — so that they are left free to their own idiosyncrasies. 
Since the whole range of spiritual and moral qualities was 
appropriated by the gods, the Unity which stood above them 
all necessarily remained abstract ; it was therefore formless 
and unmeaning Fate (the absolute constitution of things) — 
Necessity, whose oppressive character arises from the absence 
of the spiritual in it ; whereas the gods hold a friendly rela- 
tion to men, for they are spiritual natures. That higher 
thought — the knowledge of unity as God the One Spirit — 
lay beyond that grade of thought to which the Greeks 
had attained.' (Hegel, 'The Greek World,' page 256.) The 
only exception that can be taken to this statement is as to 
the ' substantial ' power of Zeus. See Iliad, viii. 1-27, &c., 
&c. Moreover, the tendency of the intellect of Greece was 
ever more and more to assign supremacy to Zeus. 

Mr. J. Brown Patterson ^ also well says : ' The distinguish- 
ing characteristic of the religion thus created by the free 
operation of the human faculties was naturally the freedom 
and the fulness of the display which it contained of human 
nature. It sought the causes of all being and all change in 
moving principles similar to those which operate in human 
breasts, and in doing so it seems to have had no principle 
of selection either metaphysical or moral. Whatever was 
palpable in man it made ideal in the divinity. Accordingly 
we find the fulness and richness of human nature in the 
gods — the Hellenic worship was in truth the worship of 
humanity. To the Hellenic conception everything beautiful 
was holy ; everything pleasant to man was acceptable to the 
gods.' 

1 Essay on the Clmracter of the Athenians. 



204 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

The pervading spirit of the Hellenic religion has been best 
expressed in Schiller's famous poem entitled 'The Gods of 
Greece,' of which I may quote a few verses : 

Wlien o'er the form of naked Truth 

The Muse had spread her magic veil, 
Creation throbbed with life and youth. 

And feeling warmed the insensible. 
Then Nature, formed for love's embrace, 

The earth in brighter glory trod ; 
All was enchanted ground, each trace 

The footstep of a god. 

But Nature now, undeified. 

Unwitting of the joys she gives, 
Unconscious of her former pride 

And of the soul that in her lives, 
Regardless of her Maker's praise 

And dead to human sympathy, 
Like a dull pendulum obeys 

The law of gravity. 

Your gay religions knew no sadness : 

They banished each austere emotion ; 
What bosom could but throb with gladness, 

When gladness was the best devotion 1 
Whate'er was sacred tlien was fair ; 

No pleasure feared the eye of God 
Where roamed the blushing Muses, where 

The Graces still abode. 

Your temples smiled like palace-halls ; 

And there ye held your dazzling court 
On many-wreathed festivals, 

Midst thundering cars and hero-sport ; 
And oft the soft soul-breathing sound 

Of dance begirt your altars fair, 
Each brow with bright love-garlands bound, 

Deep-Avreathed in dewy hair.-^ 

1 Translated by John Brown Patterson, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 205 

That there was a deeper vein of religious thought in the 
Hellenic mind is, however, true. The Eleusinian mysteries,^ 
the lyrical poets, and the tragic drama, give sufficient evi- 
dence of this ; but it does not seem to have touched the 
popular heart deeply. Their instinctive apprehension of 
ideal forms seemed to satisfy their religious needs. The 
true and all-pervading God of the average Greek was, in 
truth, neither Zeus nor Athena, but Apollo, whose chief 
shrine was at Delphi, the centre of Hellenic religious unity. 
He truly expressed their art-loving and ideal tendencies in 
all forms of mental activity, and through his oracles con- 
nected them with the superhuman world. The recently- 
discovered Delphian hymn to Apollo may be here quoted. 

Fragment T. ' Thee, son of great Zeus, famous in minstrelsy, 
I will celebrate, since by the side of this snow-capped hill 
thou dost show forth divine oracles to all mortals, after thou 
didst seize the prophetic tripod which the hateful dragon 
guarded, when thou didst pierce with thy darts the sheeny 
twisted shape.' 

Fragment II. 'Ye fair- armed daughters of loud- thunder- 
ing Zeus, who have had deep-wooded Helicon assigned to 
you for an abode, come hither, that you may chant in song 
the praises of your kinsman, golden-haired Phoebus, who, on 
his twin-peaked abode of the Parnassian rock, along with the 

1 Doctrines of a mystico-religious kind, believed to have been introduced 
from Egypt and preserved by a priestly family or families at Eleusis. The 
chief temple was afterwards in Athens, but Eleusis never lost the distinction 
which associated the mysteries specially with it. Any Greek might be 
initiated who was prepared to go through all the necessary ceremonies. The 
precise nature of the doctrine revealed is not known. I am not aware that 
modern research has gone beyond Thirlwall's conclusion : ' They were the 
remains of a worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology and 
its attendant rites, grounded on a view of Nature less fanciful, more earnest, 
and better fitted to awaken both philosophical thought and religious feeling.' 
{History of Greece, ii. 140.) Some more recent inquirers seem to think that 
there was little in the so-called 'mysteries.' On the other hand, it is not im- 
]>ossible that they had Semitic or Hamitic relations, and Thirlwall's judgment 
on the matter is probably still the soundest. The Greeks seemed to be, in some 
cases, becoming alive to the sense of sin and the consequent need of personal 
salvation. To this the mysteries as well as the Orphic rites would appeal. 



206 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

famous Delphic maids, visits the rills of the gushing Castalian 
spring, presiding over the oracular hill upon the Delphian 
headland. Come with thy prayers, O famous Attic race, 
blest with mighty cities, dwelling on the inviolate soil of 
panoplied Tritonis ; on holy altars, fire wraps in a blaze the 
thigh-bones of young bulls, and therewith Arabian vapours 
spread through it upwards to the sky ; the flute with thrill- 
ing notes pipes its lay in varied melodies ; the golden, sweetly- 
sounding lyre wakes music for triumphal songs, and the 
whole swarm of spectators to whom the Attic land has been 
assigned as a dwelling-place.' ^ 

The growing idealism and the essentially aesthetic and joy- 
ous character of the Hellenic rehgion is already visible little 
more than half way from Homer to Pindar and ^schylus, 
in the hymn to Apollo, referring to the Ionian festival there, 
and in existence as early, probably, as 730 B.C. : 

'There, in thy honour, Apollo, the long-robed lonians 
assemble with their children and their gracious dames. So 
often as they hold thy festival, they celebrate thee, for thy 
joy, with boxing and dancing and song. A man would say 
that they were strangers to death and old age evermore who 
should come on the lonians thus gathered ; for he would see 
the goodliness of all the people, and would rejoice in his soul, 
beholding the men and the fairly-cinctured women, and their 
swift ships and their great wealth, and, besides, that wonder 
of which the fame shall not perish, the maidens of Delos, 
handmaidens of Apollo the Far-darter. First they hymn 
Apollo, then Leto and Artemis delighting in arrows : and 
then they sing the praise of heroes of yore and of women, 
and throw their spell over the tribes of men.' (Jebb's 
translation.) 

To quote again from Hegel, ' The essence of the Greek 
religion is the spiritual itself, and the natural is only the 
point of departure. But, on the other hand, it must be 
observed that the divinity of the Greeks is not yet the abso- 
lute free spirit, but spirit in a particular mode fettered by the 
^ Fragment translated by Dr. Dunn, H.M.I.S., Scotland. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 207 

limitations of humanity — still dependent as a determinate 
individuality on external conditions. Individualities objec- 
tively beautiful are the gods of the Greeks.' The Aryan 
nature-worshiiD had here evidently fallen into the hands of 
an aesthetic and idealising race, and spite of the traditional 
tales of the gods, against which philosophy protested, the 
recognition of the gods reacted on the moral life of the 
Greeks by virtue of the mere fact of idealisation. 

The earliest formulated conception of the Hellenic religion 
after the race had emerged from a primitive element-wor- 
ship, is to be extracted from the Homeric poems supple- 
mented by Hesiod's ' Theogony.' It was in the human 
attributes of their gods, and the rich legendary tales about 
them and the heroes, that the Hellenic race first separated 
itself from the reHgious and intellectual life of other races. 
As time went on, these primitive conceptions became more 
and more idealised and more and more ethical, till we find 
that even the profound mind of an ^schylus and a Sophocles 
has room for the more important of the subordinate gods 
alongside their unquestionable monotheism. 

It is to the philosophers and dramatists of Greece that we 
owe those deeper thoughts as to the origin of things, the 
nature of man, and the moral order of the world, which else- 
where were a derivation from sacred books and the monopoly 
of a priestly order. In Greece the lay spirit always dominated 
— the sacerdotal was almost non-existent. But even from 
the time of Homer, as I have already indicated, the Greek 
recognised a supreme God among the gods — Zeus, the father 
of gods and men : the all-powerful. In his supreme hands 
lay the order of the world and absolute justice. Homer rep- 
resents Zeus as executing vengeance by making the trans- 
gressions of men fall heavily on themselves or their children, 
^^schylus, rising to a lofty conception, calls him all-causing, 
all-sufficing, all-seeing, all-accomplishing, Lord of lords, most 
Holy of holies : and Sophocles gives utterance to similar 
thoughts. Certainly from the time of Homer monotheism, 
or at least henotheism, lay at the basis of the Greek religion ; 



208 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

this, however, among all races has been found compatible 
with a belief in gods. Blue-eyed Athena was a great god- 
dess, but she was only the idealised expression of Jove's 
wisdom, and to her consequently he yields : ' She only of 
gods may know that chamber's keys where sleeps the sealed 
thunder of her sire.' ^ Bright-haired Apollo, again, was the 
expression of the oracular decrees of the father of gods and 
men — Apollo, who was the god of light, saviour, purifier, 
and redeemer, and ' whose cultus,' says Tiele, ' exercised on 
the religious, moral, and social life of the Greeks so profound 
and salutary an influence.' ^ 

The fact of death inevitable and of human suffering, so 
often to all appearance unjust, was a deep problem for the 
Greeks, as it has been for the thoughtful of all races. 
Behind the awful throne of Jove himself the Greek recog- 
nised the dark and fateful form of destiny, working out, for 
gods as well as for men, their lives and fortunes — answer- 
able to no other power, caring for none.^ A thread of mys- 
tery and awe accordingly ran through the web of Greek life ; 
the pathos of human existence was in their hearts (Iliad, 
xxiv. passim), but their joyous and active nature, their con- 
stant struggles in politics, war, literature, art, and philosophy, 
accompanied by an all-prevailing gymnastic, enabled them 
practically to ignore the thought of the essential evil in life ; 
and to treat all ultimate questions, chiefly through the imagi- 
nation, and not as supreme and urgent realities in the prob- 
lem of existence. ' Forasmuch as men must die,' says Pindar, 
' wherefore should one sit vainly in the dark through a dull 
and nameless age, and without lot in noble deeds ?'* What 
a contrast to the Brahman and the Buddhist ! 

Sacerdotalism, I have said, was alien to the Hellenic cast 

1 J5sch. Earn, translated by E. Myers. 

2 'Ne'er spake I yet, from my oracular throne, of man, of woman, or of 
commonwealth, answer unbidden of the Olympian sire.' — Eum. 616. 

3 And yet it sometimes appeared that Zeus was powerful enough to be him- 
self a factor in fate. 

* Olymp. i. 82, quoted by Professor Butcher, p. 105 of Aspects of the 
Greek Genius. 



THE ARYAN OF INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 209 

of thought and life. The temples were simply the house of 
the god to whom they were dedicated, and the priest (except 
in the case of some famihes that had hereditary rights) was 
elected and might be changed from time to time, returning, 
after he had served his period, to the civil life from which 
he had been taken. The priest's duty seems to have been, 
in fact, chiefly that of a caretaker and of a regulator of the 
manner of offering sacrifices on special occasions : he assisted 
also in the offerings and sacrifices which others came to 
make. The oracular utterances at certain temples like 
Dodona and Delphi (for centuries the centre of Greek relig- 
ious thought and guide of its political life), revealing the will 
of the god or future events, and the magical cures in some 
^sculapian temples would seem to be the only character- 
istics of religion which connect the Greeks with the magical 
in religion. The most recent inquiries, it is true, point to 
both a Semitic and Hamitic element in the religion of the 
Greeks, but these elements were themselves Hellenised. 

But although there was no priesthood or church in the 
modern sense, to the Greek, nature was full of deity ; holy 
were the haunted forest boughs, holy the air, the water, and 
the fire ; but whereas other races accepted the belief of an 
animated nature in a prosaic, and generally suspicious, spirit, 
with the Greeks the belief was characterised by amity and 
joyousness. There was also a full recognition of the gods 
in the great incidents of domestic life — birth, marriao;e, 
and death ; and, even at banquets, the libations always con- 
nected the banqueters with present gods. All these cere- 
monies, however, seem to have had an artistic quite as much 
as a religious character, in the sense which other nations 
understood religion. The relation of the Greek to his gods 
was an easy, pleasant, and friendly one. Natures so bright, 
joyous, and high-spirited were not likely to dwell on the 
mysterious and awful in religion. ' Truth and self-control,' 
says Tiele (p. 218), 'without self-mortification or renuncia- 
tion of nature, a steady equilibrium between the sensible 
and the spiritual, moral earnestness combined with an open 

14 



210 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

eye for the happiness and beauty of life, such are the charac- 
teristic features of the Delphic Apollo worship in which the 
Greek religion almost reached the climax of its development.' 
As regards a future state, Tiele points out that it was a 
mark of the etliical character of the Delphic religion that it 
spoke of a future state of retribution ; but this was never a 
definite popular belief, though taught by the poets. That it 
was an article of faith among the more thoughtful is estab- 
lished by many passages in Greek literature, although few 
may have shared the conviction of Antigone when she says : 
' When I come there into the other world, such is the hope 
I cherish, I shall find love with my father, love with my 
mother, and love with thee my brother' (Soph. 'Antig.' 
897). 

Art. — The religion of the beautiful, joyous, and ideal 
received fit expression in the sacred houses, the remains of 
which are still a wonder and joy to mankind because of their 
severe charm and refined simplicity. It is easy to see that 
Greek art and Greek religion were necessarily one : both 
were the expression of the same ideal conceptions : 

' How grand and chaste is the Greek temple ! ' says 
Hettner, ' so simple in its beauty, so solemn in its repose, 
so divine in its serenity ! It is not like our churches — a 
place of assembly for the devout congregation ; it contains 
only the statue of the god to whom it is consecrated, and his 
sacred treasures and votive offerings. It stands, therefore, 
quite apart from every profane environment. An encircling 
wall guards a wide, sacred precinct ; and in the midst of this 
rises, with far-seen splendour of marble and of gold, the 
house of the god. Nor may it stand on the common earth, 
trod by the feet of mortal man. Broad and mighty it is true, 
the fair structure stretches along the ground as the natural 
basis of existence : but three mighty strata of steps lift it 
above the level of everyday reality, and bear it, like a great 
votive gift, towards heaven. The god who dwells within the 
cella is no dark forbidding deity ; he is a god of joy and 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 211 

perpetual serenity — a god of light. To embrace the light 
and air, the portico throws itself wide ; and all round runs a 
colonnade, connecting the narrow dwelling of the god with 
the happy outer world. Joyous in their living, elastic 
strength, rise these pillars. The counterpressure of the 
superstructure which it is their purpose to support, receives 
and checks them as they ascend. Above them rest the 
superincumbent beams of the ceihng ; and over these spreads 
the lofty roof drooping on both sides its broad overshadow- 
ing wings as if to warn and compel the soaring and aspiring 
pillars to remain contented with the solid sufficient earth, 
the fair divine Now, and seek no beyond. It is this solution 
of opposing forces, this aspiration which with glad and will- 
ing self-control returns within its natural limits, this living, 
satisfied, and harmonious repose which reflects on the mind 
of the beholder such a grateful calm. The enjoyment we 
have in the intelligent contemplation of a Greek temple is a 
homage to and a celebration of the divine, eternal Sophrosyne.' 
A speaker representing Egypt in one of Professor Ebers' novels, 
says : ' There is such a great difference between the Greek 
and Egyptian works of art. When I went into our own 
gigantic temples to pray I always felt as if I must prostrate 
myself in the dust before the greatness of the gods, and en- 
treat them not to crush so insignificant a worm ; but in the 
temple of Hera at Samos I could only raise my hands to 
heaven in joyful thanksgiving that the gods had made the 
earth so beautiful. In Egypt I always believed as I had 
been taught : " Life is a sleep ; we shall not awake to our 
true existence in the kmgdom of Osiris till the hour of 
death : " but in Greece I thought : " I am born to live and to 
enjoy this cheerful, bright, and blooming world." ' 

In statuary also the religious idea found expression. 
Pheidias, the greatest of Greek artists, wrought statues 
designed to give a moral, lofty idea of deity. 'In the 
Athena of the Parthenon,' says Tiele,^ ' and the Zeus of 
Olympia and the ancient tragedy, the religion of the Hellenes 

1 Outlines of the History of Ancient Religions, p. 224. 



212 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

reached the climax of its development. The ideal humani- 
sation of deity for wMch the way was prepared by the cultus 
of the Delphic ApoUo was perfected at Athens by ^schylus, 
Sophocles, and Pheidias.' The great Pericles ' was led,' says 
Kanke,^ ' in promoting art to strengthen religion.' 

Such, concisely summed up, was the Greek religion as 
reahsed in architecture and the plastic arts — the natural 
and necessary expression of their religious sentiment. 

Art in literature distinguished the Hellenic race no less 
than their work in marble and stone. They created a 
language subtle, far-reaching, and flexible, and fit to give 
expression to every form of literature. These forms, lyrical, 
epic, dramatic, historical, philosophical, they indeed created ; 
and they still are the teachers of mankind. Their attitude 
to all knowledge was open and receptive. Nothing was 
common or unclean. What a contrast to the nations we 
have spoken of in past chapters ! ' The Greeks,' says Pro- 
fessor Butcher of Edinburgh,^ 'before any other people of 
antiquity, possessed the love of knowledge for its own sake. 
To see things as they really are, to discern their meanings 
and adjust their relations, was with them an instinct and a 
passion. Their methods in science and philosophy might be 
very faulty, and their conclusions often absurd, but they had 
that fearlessness of intellect which is the first condition of 
seeing truly. Poets and philosophers alike looked with un- 
flinching eye on all that met them, on man and the world, 
on life and death. They interrogated Nature, and sought to 
wrest her secrets from her, without misgiving and without 
afterthought. They took no count of the consequences. 
" Let us follow the argument whithersoever it leads," may 
be taken not only as the motto of the Platonic philosophy, 
but as expressing one side of the Greek genius.' Ranke, 
again, says (' History of the World,' viii. 7) : ' There is 
something almost miraculous in this simultaneous or nearly 

1 History of the World, p. 229. 

2 Some Aspects of the Oreek Genius. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 213 

simultaneous appearance of such different types of genius 
accomplishing in poetry, philosophy, and history the greatest 
feats which the human mmd has ever performed. Each is 
original and strikes out his own line, but all work in har- 
mony. By one or the other of these masters are set forth all 
the greatest problems concerning things divine and human. 
Athens rejoiced in the possession of a theatre the like of 
which, for sport or earnest, has never been seen in any other 
city. The people lived in the constant enjoyment of the 
noblest dramatic productions. Sophocles was not dispos- 
sessed by Euripides : their works appeared at the same time 
on the stage. The history of Herodotus was read aloud in 
public meetings. Thucydides was reserved for more private 
study, but his works had a wide circulation in writing.' 

Manhood. — Observe, next, how Hellenic idealism en- 
tered into their conception of man himself. If gods were 
human, men might be divine. A perfect body, the easy and 
unencumbered vehicle of a free and happy spirit, was the 
object of their admiration. The Olympic dust was the richest 
treasure which a young Greek could gather. Speaking of the 
harmonious athletic of the Greeks, Hettner says, ' Let us 
follow all Greece to the great centre of national unity, the 
plain of Olympia.' Here the victor was raised to the eleva- 
tion of the gods themselves. ' Poets like Simonides and 
Pindar sang immortal songs of victory in his praise ; the best 
cities were anxious that he should be enrolled among their 
citizens ; and when he reached his home, the gate and part of 
the city wall were pulled down in token that a city which 
produced such men needed not the protection of walls. The 
conqueror entered in festive procession drawn by four white 
horses, proudly clad in purple and wearing on his head the 
olive wreath he had won. . . . Putting these wonderful facts 
in array before our minds, we cannot fail to feel deeply how 
wide is the difference between the moral basis on which 
Greek antiquity rests and our modes of life and thought in 
modern times. We men of to-day can hardly even see how 



^14 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

the Greeks, the most intellectual nation the world has seen, 
could make their highest national festival a gymnastic one, 
far less can we sympathise with or imagine ourselves actually 
taking part in this truly Bacchic enthusiasm for the Olympic 
victor.' 

And for what did they contend ? Not for money rewards, 
but for glory alone — their success being signalised by a 
reward in itself worthless : ' at the Olympic games, an ohve- 
crown or garland ; at the Isthmian, one of pine ; at the 
Nemean, one of parsley ; at the Pythian, apples from the 
trees sacred to Apollo ; and at the Panathenffia, ohves from 
the tree of Minerva.' (Lucian, ' Anach.') ' If we look at the 
inner nature of these sports,' says Hegel, ' we shall first 
observe how sport itself is opposed to serious business, to 
dependence and need. This wrestling, running, contending, 
was no serious affair ; bespoke no obligation of defence, no 
necessity of combat. Serious occupation is labour that has 
reference to some want. I or nature must succumb ; if the 
one is to continue, the other must fall. In contrast with this 
kind of seriousness, however, 'sport presents the higher seri- 
ousness : for in it nature is wrought into spirit, and although 
in these contests the subject has not advanced to the highest 
grade of serious thought, yet, in this exercise of his physical 
pow^'s, man shows his freedom, viz. that he has transformed 
his body to an organ of spirit.' Nor do these pertinent 
remarks exhaust the significance of the great games : for 
they were always accompanied with Temple services and 
were pleasing to the gods. They thus stood out as the great 
events of the year, which symbolised the religious as well as 
political unity of the Hellenic races. 

The statues of the gods were themselves Greek men. It 
is a grave blunder to look on them as idols. Idols are mere 
symbols, and often hideous symbols, of the human fears and 
hopes of those races who believe that they live in a hostile 
world. The Greek gods on the contrary were the idealised 
and artistic expression of the Greek himself. Apollo and 
Hermes as well as the demigod heroes Achilles and Theseus 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 215 

are simply glorified Greeks. ' The benign and simple lines 
of the countenance, the large eyes, the short forehead, the 
straight nose, the refined mouth, belonged to the race and 
were their natural characteristics : their harmony of propor- 
tion was a marked feature of the Greek physique. . . . The 
physical, however, was itself only an expression of the 
spiritual. The innate love of freedom and independence, and 
the living consciousness of human dignity shone forth in the 
erect bearing which distinguished the Greek from the bar- 
barian.' (Curtius, ' Griech. Gesch.' i. 25.) 

The Greek exaltation of courage, their love of country, 
their intense personality, their freedom of political life, pre- 
pared them for a great world-task which it fell to them to 
perform in the interests of civilisation and human progress. 
Even in the time of the great Cyrus they endeavoured to 
throw their shield over their brothers on the Asiatic coast. 
They subsequently drove back the whole Oriental power led 
against them by Xerxes in person, and by so doing laid the 
whole future of humanity under eternal obligations. Mara- 
thon, Thermopylae, and Salamis are imperishable names. 
' Thus was Greece freed,' says Hegel, * from the pressure 
which threatened to overwhelm it. Greater battles unques- 
tionably have been fought, but these live immortal, not in 
the historical records of nations only, but also of science and 
art — of the noble and the moral generally. For these are 
world-historical victories ; they were the salvation of culture 
and spiritual vigour, and they rendered the Asiatic principle 
powerless. How often, on other occasions, have not men 
sacrificed everything for one grand object ! How often have 
not warriors fallen for duty and country ! But here we are 
called on to admire, not only valour, genius, and spirit, but 
the purport of the contest — the effect, the result, which are 
unique in their kind. In other battles a particular interest 
is predominant ; but the immortal fame of the Greeks is 
none other than their due, in consideration of the noble 
cause for which deliverance was achieved. In the history of 



216 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

the world it is not the valour that has been displayed, nor 
the so-called merit of the combatants, but the importance of 
the cause itself, that must decide the fame of the achieve- 
ment. In the case before us, the interest of the world's his- 
tory hung trembling in the balance.^ Oriental despotism — 
a world united under one lord and sovereign — on the one 
side, and separate states — insignificant in extent and re- 
sources, but animated by free individuality — on the other 
side, stood front to front in array of battle. Never in history 
has the superiority of spiritual power over material bulk — 
and that of no contemptible amount — been made so glori- 
ously manifest. This war and the subsequent development 
of the states which took the lead in it, is the most brilliant 
period of Greece. Everything which the Greek principle in- 
volved then reached its perfect bloom and came into the 
light of day.' (Hegel, ' The Greek World,' p. 268.) It may 
be added that the contest was also one between the spirit of 
centralisation and that of decentralisation. 

When we first come in contact with the Hellenic race in 
history, we at once recognise the loftiest, and deepest, and 
richest expression of the genuine Aryan spirit. A strong 
and joyous personality, and its free and beautiful develop- 
ment, meet us. We are not surprised to read Aristotle's 
words in which, speaking for all Greece, he tells us that 
the aim of life is ' living happily and beautifully.' (' Pol.' 
iii. 9. 14.) They believed in the essential beneficence of 
Nature and thought life well worth living. Adamantius, 
the physician, says, * they were the most beautiful eyed of 
all races,' and we can well believe it. Above all other 
races before or since they seem to have lived. It was their 
intense sense of life and the joy in life that lay at the 
bottom of their ' zeal for activity,' as the German historian 
Curtius well says. Humanity, in short, in all its breadth 
and variety, was represented in this wonderful race, free 
from the overshadowing idea of God as eternal law and 

1 So with the battle of Chalous, when Aetius drove back the Huns in 
455 A.D. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 217 

stern judge, as a being of exacting claims if not of hostile 
intent. 

But, let us now for a moment try to get rid of the 
Hellenic glamour and contemplate the other side of the 
picture. 

I think we must admit that the Greeks, and above all 
the Athenian Greeks, were light-minded and frivolous, easily 
swayed hither and thither, vain, of a shallow, because merely 
sesthetic, morality; talkative, untruthful, scheming, and 
pleasure-loving, with a strong tendency to licentiousness. 
Brilliant comrades, I should say they were doubtful friends. 

Again, if we set aside the philosophers and dramatists 
who represented the highest religious thought of the Greeks, 
it can scarcely be said that the Greeks as a race were, in 
any sense in which we now use the term, a religious people. 
The tales of the gods which Plato would have banished 
from education were unquestionably an expression of the 
riotous and imaginative spirit of the Greeks, and could not 
possibly have influenced their lives to virtue. That religion 
consisted in a personal ethical relation to God and gods was 
certainly recognised by them but did not very profoundly 
influence them, although all were so far restrained by the 
fact that Zeus punished iniquity. The gods generally had 
to be honoured and offerings made to them ; but that was 
substantially all. Wanting in a deep religious sense and 
not distinguished by any high conception of abstract duty, 
they were consequently deficient in reverence. Nor were 
they capable of that feeling of obligation to supreme law 
which marked the Eoman. Their true religion was Art: 
the becoming, the fit, and the beautiful were truly their 
gods. The Greek conception in truth fell far short of tlie 
Judaic and Zoroastrian and Hindu conceptions of a Supreme 
Being and man's relations to him. The moral force w-hich 
sustained the inner life of the Greek was his idealising 
tendency which found expression in art. This was quite 
compatible with their acceptance of the popular stories about 
those whom they idealised. 



218 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Further, the position of Athenian women was far from 
being what we should have expected to grow out of the well- 
known scene between Hector and Andromache, and many 
domestic incidents in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It fell 
short of the Doric conception, and seems utterly incompatible 
with the women of the great dramatists. The women spent 
their time in looking after their domestic concerns and sat in 
a room set apart for them — the gynseceum — which was half 
boudoir, half a day-nursery. They sewed, wove, and em- 
broidered. There is something Oriental in the conception of 
the wife's position among the Ionic Greeks. The chief glory 
of an Athenian woman was that she should not be talked 
about. The husbands regarded their wives as quite inferior 
creatures, fit only to look after the house and bear children. 
They themselves spent their time in the streets, gymnasia, 
and places of public resort, or in banquetings at each other's 
houses, or visiting purchasable women (wlio seem to have 
been numerous in aU Greek towns except Sparta), and some 
of whom, like Aspasia, were women of high accomplishments 
and held ' salons,' frequented by all the literary, artistic, and 
political men who could secure invitations.^ The position of 
women in Sparta was much higher, and it is interesting to 
note that the Greek poetesses were for the most part of the 
Doric stem. 

Finally, democratic equality, notwithstanding the over- 
shadowing influence of the Areopagus (powerful as a restrain- 
ing influence even after the democratic reforms of that council 
by Pericles), and the presence of powerful hereditary families 
who endeavoured to lead the mass, led to quarrelsomeness 
and jobbery within their own cities and constant little wars 
with their fellow Greeks. They could not sacrifice their 
narrow civic interests even to the idea of Hellenic nationality, 
except for brief and uncertain periods. Delphi and the 
Olympic games were their only living points of unity — the 
former religious, the latter gymnastic. Their town and tribal 

^ They were always foreigners or freed women, never daughters of citizens, 
it is said. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 219 

confederacies were loose associations held together by the 
worship of a common tutelary deity, Demeter, Apollo, or 
Poseidon. 

It would ahnost seem as if Lycurgus saw the kind of 
creatures he had to deal with, and resolved to discipline tliem 
tightly and to subject them at Sparta to a civic system wliich 
was at once school and camp, and thus to mould, out of the 
facile Greek nature, the stern and upright Spartan. And for 
a time he succeeded, but it was a moulding from without, 
not from within. 

Let us not forget, however, that it was these very Hellenic 
characteristics, and above all the personal freedom in which 
they had their roots, which made it possible for the Greeks 
to be artists, historians, and bold, speculative inquirers into 
all things human and divine. It was probably only char- 
acter of the versatile Greek type, and under Greek conditions, 
that was compatible with the work they did for humanity. 
They had all the faults of the artistic temperament, but then 
they had the latter with its virtues and vitality in all its fnl- 
ness. They had to pay the price of their defects that they 
might gain Art and Philosophy for themselves and mankind. 
They were gifted with a genius for perception and expression, 
and this in every kind of human emotion and every depart- 
ment of intellectual activity, and whatever they attempted 
they succeeded in doing in the best possible form. To them 
we owe our logic and philosophy, the beginnings of science, 
the advancement of mathematics, and the finest forms of 
history, poetry, and the drama, as well as the arts of sculpture, 
architecture, and painting. It is when contemplating the 
vast and various contributions which the Hellenes made to 
the life of humanity that Shelley beautifully says : 

Within the circuit of this pendant orb 

There lies an antique region, on which fell 

The dews of thought, in the world's golden dawn, 

Earliest and most benign ; and from it sprung 

Temples and cities and immortal forms, 

And harmonies of wisdom and of sons:', 



220 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair : 

And when the sun of its dominion failed, 

And when the winter of its glory came, 

The winds that stript it bare blew on and swept 

That dew into the utmost wildernesses, 

In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed 

The unmaternal bosom of the North. 

From the Prologue to Hellas. 



CHAPTEE II 

THE GREEK IDEAL OF MANHOOD AND THE CONSEQUENT 
CHARACTERISTICS OF HELLENIC EDUCATION GENERALLY 

As a necessary introduction to the understanding of the 
Hellenic ideal let me point out what is little more than a 
logical deduction from what we have already said. The 
genuine Greek did not make any real distinction between a 
virtuous life and a beautiful and happy one. Virtue doubt- 
less was the condition of happiness ; but virtue itself meant 
a nature in harmony with itself and its external relations. 
It was essentially aesthetic. Thus we may truly say that 
it was not the abstract good of Plato which governed the 
ethical conceptions of the Greeks, but the beautiful as 
another expression for harmony. Hence the compound 
word kalokagathia. But inasmuch as the Greek mind was 
essentially concrete, it included in the idea, of human 
excellence the outer aspect and bearing of the individual 
man. 

The oldest form of Greek life was the Dorian. (We may 
here omit the ^olic.) The chief representatives of the Doric 
tribes were the Cretans and Spartans, and consequently we 
are justified in looking among them for the primitive laws, 
customs, and beliefs of the Hellenic race. If the Dorians 
were the first to form civic communities, we can easily 
understand that whatever their national temperament and 
unconscious life-aims might be, these would be subordinated 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 221 

to the necessity of maintaining the existence of their rising 
communities in the midst of hostile races. Hence the pure 
Hellenic spirit would be subordinated in them to military 
requirements. 

In the education of the Dorians it is Sparta with which 
we have chiefly to do. Unlovely as at first sight the Spartan 
character and constitution seem, we must never forget that 
the Spartans were yet Hellenes, and that the Greek spirit, 
which reached its finest expression in Athens, animated them 
also — only subdued in their case by a sterner sense of duty, 
by an arbitrary state-supremacy over the individual citizen, 
and a conservative attachment to the older and simpler con- 
ceptions of the Hellenic race. They were of the past, and 
in their political system it is doubtful if they possessed the 
possibility of progressive development. Among them we 
find supreme attachment to the state, as the central motive 
force in the individual hfe, much more strongly expressed 
than among the Athenians ; but it is still held by them in 
union with a deep sense of personal freedom — achieved 
through the state and (so to speak) contra mundum. For 
the fundamental characteristics of the Hellenic mind were 
not here wanting. ' In the genuine Doric form of govern- 
ment,' says Miiller (' Dorians,' ii. p. 6), ' there were certain 
predominant ideas, which were peculiar to that race, and 
were also expressed in the worship of Apollo, viz. those of 
becomingness or graceful expression {euhosmia) ; of self- 
control and moderation (sophrosyne) ; and of manly virtue 
(arete). Accordingly, the constitution was formed for the 
education as well of the old as of the young ; and in a Doric 
state, education was, upon the whole, a subject of greater 
importance than government. And for this reason all 
attempts to explain the legislation of Lycurgus from partial 
views and considerations have necessarily failed. That 
external happiness and enjoyment were not the aim of these 
institutions was soon perceived.' Again he says (ii. 3. 1) : 
'We may say that the Doric state was a body of men, 
acknowledging one strict principle of order and one unalter- 



222 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

able rule of manners ; and so subjecting themselves to this 
system that scarcely anything was unfettered by it; but 
every action was influenced and regulated by the recognised 
principles.' But in carrying out his scheme of discipline 
Lycurgus was not, Plutarch says, * himself unduly austere ; 
it was he who dedicated, says Sosibius, the little statue of 
Laughter or Mirth, which was introduced occasionally at 
their suppers and places of common entertainment, to serve 
as a sort of sweetmeat to accompany their strict and hard 
life.'^ The ultimate aim of the state-regulations, however, 
was such as we have quoted from Miiller, and had a con- 
scious ideal of personal as well as civic manhood in view. 
Miiller maintains that up to the time of the Persian Wars 
(let us say even up to 450 B.C.) all mental excellence flour- 
ished at Sparta, and it has to be remembered that it was to 
the Dorian branch of the Hellenic race that we owe some of 
the lyrical poets. 

We must recognise the Cretan and Spartan education as 
the oldest to take shape among the Hellenic races, and we 
would, accordingly, fain find among them the ideas which lay 
at the root of all Hellenic life. I think we do find them as 
summed up in the three expressions I have already quoted 
from Miiller, arete, sophrosyne, and eukosmia. Indeed, I seem 
to see in these the basis of all Greek life whatsoever, even in 
its finest forms ; and, as the basis of their life, they must 
also have been, more or less consciously, the aim of their 
education. The Athenian to Kokov Kayadov simply summed 
up these characteristics in different words. This was the 
Greek ideal of conduct. But all was subservient to the state, 
and the Hellenic ideal of man, both as body and mind, was 
thus inseparable from his state-ideal. 

The Greek child, speaking generally, was brought up for 

the service of the state. The individual existed for the state. 

The civic idea was dominant, just as in China the family idea 

was and is dominant, and in India the caste idea, in Egypt 

1 Life of Lyacrgus. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 223 

the class idea, among the Jews the theological idea, and 
among the Persians the virile military idea. But we must re- 
member that, whatever might be the local form of government 
the numerous separate states of Greece were free ; and that 
if there was, among the Dorians, an apparently arbitrary 
moulding of the mind of youth, what was done was done 
by the citizens themselves, in a free Greek spirit. In Sparta, 
such was the instinctive capacity of the race for the 
ideal, that the conditions of qualification for citizenship 
were necessarily good, inasmuch as they were determined 
by the ideal. Even the importance of bodily training 
was recognised with a view to a true manly product apart 
from the relation of gymnastics to the national defence, 
although this latter object was necessarily more pronounced 
among the Dorian than among the Ionic races. But even 
among the Dorians we must not concentrate our attention 
so exclusively on the gymnastic side of their training as to 
lose sight of its moral element. The aim of the severe dis- 
cipline under which they were brought up was to produce 
obedience, self-sacrifice, courage, promptitude, self-reliance, 
and a single-eyed concentration on the immediate purpose of 
all action.^ Thus was produced a self-controlled and vic- 
torious man. Accordingly, I conclude that while the de- 
fensive requirements of the state among the Doric races 
dominated and controlled the processes of education ; yet 
the requirements of the state, inasmuch as they could only 
be satisfied by the rearing of citizens who were virtuous, self- 
controlled, and possessed of the graces of manner and physi- 
cally well-grown, were also the highest possible even in the 
interests of each man. Thus, free development of the indi- 
vidual and the service of the state were within certain limits 
harmonised. 

Among the Athenians also, and, in truth, in all Hellenic 
communities, the citizens lived for the state which was 
supreme ; but it is necessary here to emphasise a distinc- 
tion between the races, 

1 This reads like a quotation. 



224 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Among the Doric races, and notably in Sparta, the state 
existed as a great educational institution, and citizens were 
deliberately formed after a certain pattern. Among the 
Ionic races, and especially the Attic branch, on the other 
hand, the education was not state-education in any proper 
sense : there was no state-system, and the idea and aims of 
the state consequently did not rigidly control the education 
given. The individual was educated in the first instance for 
himself — with a view to his own full and free development 
■ — and only secondarily for the state. The best possible 
product in manhood is better than a second-rate manufac- 
tured citizen, even from the point of view of public policy. 
In short, a development of body and mind, so that the one 
should serve the other, and both work in subjection to the 
ideas of ' self-control, moral excellence, and the becoming,' 
and thus give to the state a harmonious man, was the Attic 
idea of education. The Dorian thought, on the contrary, 
first of the state in its integrity, and only in the second 
place of the man. But, as I have pointed out, his require- 
ments for the man were conceived in a true Hellenic spirit. 

It would appear, then, that it is among the Hellenic 
races, above all in Attica, that we find arising, for the first 
time in the history of the world, a wholly new conception 
of human life, and, consequently, a new conception of the 
end of education. The Chinese was trained in obedience to 
precepts and customs with a view to civic order and the 
more common social and prudential virtues ; the Persian 
was trained to be truthful, generous, and brave for himself 
as well as for the state, and with these virtues there was 
a spirit of free individualism, but it was boyish and un- 
thoughtful: other races of antiquity were held down by 
despotic tradition and overawed by the dogmatism of a 
(presumably) divine teaching ; the Ionian Greek, however, 
formed a conception of the ideal for each man, which 
ideal was to be freely sought — an ideal much higher than 
any that had preceded it, because it aimed at manly dignity 
and harmony of the whole nature — mind and body. All 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 225 

authority of the state proceeded from the individual citizen 
in his free development and activity. The very laws were 
a counterpart of the life. 

Another distinction between the Dorian and Attic is 
worthy of mention. The laws of Lycurgus imposed the 
education of the free citizen as a duty on the state, just as 
the laws of Solon at Athens imposed it as a duty on each 
father of a family. The difference is significant. 

The Hellenic races generally, both Dorian and Ionian, 
endeavoured to realise their ideal by means of two educa- 
tional instruments — music and gymnastic. Under the 
head of music was included literature as well as music in 
its narrower sense ; and I would further point out that 
music, even in its narrower sense, embraced (among the 
Dorians especially) religious training, because of its con- 
nection with choral singing and the worship of the gods. 

Such being the general character and aim of Greek life 
and Greek education, let us now consider in detail the 
means that were taken to train the youth of the country, 
beginning with the oldest Greek system — the Doric, as 
exemplified in Crete and Sparta — a system towards which 
both Xenophon and Plato, weary of licentious democracies, 
were disposed to look back with some longing. And yet, 
spite of Plato and Xenophon, it is in the Ionic-Attic life 
and education that the modern world must ever recognise 
the true Hellenic spirit. 

But before going further, it is necessary for us to bear in 
mind that national education did not mean in any part of 
Hellas what it means in Europe now. Those who were free 
citizens or burgesses were alone regarded as forming integral 
parts of the state, the larger number of the inhabitants — 
composed of foreign residents and slaves — being excluded. 
In Sparta, for example, at its best period, the subject resi- 
dents, including the Helots, were three times as numerous as 
the true citizens. In Attica, again, the total population was 
about 500,000, and of these only 100,000 were citizens. It 

15 



226 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

has also to be premised that the education which was given, 
both at Sparta and Athens, was the iustiuctive product of the 
life of the people, not the deliberate result of educational 
discussion and theory. 

To fix the date of the first schools in Greece is difficult, 
but we do not go too far back when we fix it at 600 b.c. in 
Athens. This was a period of intense Hellenic activity. 
According to Plutarch, almost every free citizen received at 
least elementary instruction so early as the time of Aristides, 
who died 467 B.C. The Spartan education, if organised along 
with the Spartan state, must have dated from about 850 b.c. 

I would, however, here emphasise what I have already 
frequently indicated — that we must not measure the educa- 
tion of a nation by its schools. These arise only where there 
is a written literature. But long before their existence, oral 
literature, religious and heroic, not to speak of customs and 
laws, were educating the people. And again, I would point 
out that we are not to conclude from the non-existence of 
schools that children were not, in a considerable number of 
cases at least, taught to read and write in their own homes 
in so far as these arts were necessary for the conduct of the 
ordinary business of life. 



CHAPTER III 

EDUCATION AMONG THE DOKIAN GREEKS 
I. CRETAN EDUCATION 

The manly vigour of the Dorian, his simplicity and natural- 
ness, were reproduced in the education to which he subjected 
the young. The Hellenic idea of the supremacy of the state 
was recognised more fully than among the lonians, who (as 
pre-eminently in Athens) allowed more individual freedom, 
and were characterised by more variety, flexibility, and 
subtlety of nature — elements necessary to bring to fruition 
the artistic genius of the Hellenic mind. With the Dorians 



TBE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 227 

the state was the schoolmaster : the state itself was, in truth, 
an organised educational polity. 

In Crete the boys were retained in the family till their 
eighteenth year. At this age they were required to enter 
themselves (some say these associations were voluntary) 
as members of bands or troops to be trained in a severe 
course of gymnastic including archery, hunting, and mili- 
tary exercises. At this age also they were admitted to the 
public meals and allowed to listen to the conversation of the 
grown men. 

These bands, each with its own head, were under the 
general superintendence of an overseer appointed by the 
state. There was no gymnastic ' specialist ' employed as 
teacher — at least in the earlier times. Their literary 
education, so far as reading, writing, &c., were concerned 
received little or no attention. But in connection with the 
Doric music, which all learnt, they became thoroughly 
versed in the laws. These they chanted. They also sang 
hymns to the gods, and recited tales of heroes, and narra- 
tives of the great achievements of their ancestors. Their 
literary education thus really comprised music, religion, civic 
economy, history, and poetry in their rudimentary forms. 

As to the J^olic stem of the Hellenic race, I may say in 
passing that it was more nearly allied in its educational 
practices to the Doric than to the Ionic-Attic. Thebes in 
Bceotia was the representative town of this Hellenic branch. 
In music, both the lyre and the flute were taught at Thebes, 
and the influence of Athens was so far felt that literary 
schools existed there before the time of Socrates. The 
slaughtering of the children of the school of Mycalessus by a 
band of Thracians is narrated by Thucydides (vii. 49). 
Plutarch also tells us that Epaminondas, the great Theban, 
occupied himself with philosophic studies, and it is well- 
known that rhetoricians and philosophers taught at Thebes 
when Philip of Macedon was a boy.^ 

1 The various colonies of the different Hellenic races in Asia Minor and 
throughout the Mediterranean followed each the customs of their mother city. 



228 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

SPARTAN EDUCATION 

The Cretan principles of education received their full de- 
velopment in Sparta. ' This is one point,' says Aristotle, ' in 
which the Lacedsenionians deserve praise: they devote a 
great deal of attention to the educational needs of their chil- 
dren, and their attention takes the form of action on the part 
of the state.' (' Polit.' v. 1.) 

The position of Sparta in the centre of a hostile population 
compelled its statesmen to give prominence to the gymnastic 
and military side of education. The state had to hold its 
own, and it could only do so through the vigour and prowess 
of its individual citizens. Sparta, accordingly, was little 
more than an organised camp.^ We are not to suppose that 
Lycurgus invented the Spartan civic system. He gave form 
and definite purpose to those traditionary Doric customs and 
tendencies which we find partially operative in Crete. Nor, 
according to Plutarch (i. 125), was it his intention to rear a 
conquering race. ' He thought rather that the happiness of 
a state, as of a private citizen, consisted chiefly in the exer- 
cise of virtue and in the concord of the inhabitants. His aim 
in all his arrangements was to make and keep the people 
free-minded, self-dependent, and temperate.' The state rested 

^ The Dorians effected a settlement in the Peloponnesus in the eleventh 
century B.C. Sparta was, before the time of Lycurgus, a double monarchy. 
Lycurgus about 850 B.C. still further weakened the monarchical authority, so 
that the two kings became little more than presidents of the senate. The 
senate consisted of thirty members, including the kings. The free inhabitants 
of Sparta alone had political rights. With few exceptions, they were owners 
of the soil and lived on their rents. The Perioeci — inhabitants of the sur- 
rounding country and towns | were free, but had no political rights. They 
were engaged in actual farming and in various industries and commerce. The 
Helots, again, were in the position of slaves or rather serfs, and were com- 
posed of captives taken in war, or rebels who had submitted. They did 
menial work in Sparta and cultivated the lands of the free citizens, paying a 
fixed rent of one-half the produce. Sparta was regarded as a leading power in 
Greece from 555 B.C. In b.c. 510 it began to interfere north of the Pelopon- 
nese and as the supporter of the oligarchy to incur the hatred of Attica. The 
Peloponnesian War was waged, b.c. 431-404, resulting in the triumph of 
Sparta and of oligarchic versus democratic principles. Macedonian domina- 
tion of Greece dates from 335 b.c. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 229 

on the idea that each citizen must be prepared to sacrifice 
himself to the whole. 

1. Infancy 

The governing conception in education was the production 
of a hardy spirit in a hardy body. To ensure this, the dis- 
cipline began from the day of birth. The babe was bathed 
in water mixed with wine, because (it is said) the Spartans 
believed that only strong and healthy children could endure 
such a bath, and that the sickly must die of it. After this, 
the council of the elders of the tribe (jgerousia) decided in 
the public place of meeting as to whether the child should 
die or live. The healthy and strong boy was preserved, but 
the sickly and weak one was ' put away.' It used to be held 
that it was thrown down a precipice on Mount Taygetus ; 
but the custom seems rather to have been to expose it in a 
defile of Taygetus or some outlying district round Sparta and 
allow it to grow up, if any one among the subject population 
chose to save it. All rights of citizenship were for ever 
denied to it. Healthy children alone could be of service to 
the state. 

Up to the seventh year the child belonged to the mother, 
by whom it was brought up, the health of the body being 
her chief care. In early times the Spartan mother nursed 
her child herself. After the Persian wars, however (b.c. 479), 
in the houses of rank, we hear of wet-nurses and nursery 
maids (hired women of the class of the Periceci), who were 
noted in Sparta for special carefulness and ability. They 
were on that account much prized by the citizens of other 
Greek states. The child was not wrapped in swaddling-bands 
(spargana). The Spartans held that its limbs should be free, 
so that the natural growth might be unimpeded. It was 
made hardy by fasting, and trained (it is said) to overcome 
fear by being left alone in the dark. Screaming was pre- 
vented as much as possible, for the Spartan, as a rule, was 
not allowed to cry out. The discipline of self-control thus 
began very early. 



230 PRE-CURISTIAN EDUCATION 

2. The Education of the Boys 

(a) Gymnastic. — In their seventh year the legitimate sons 
of citizens were entrusted by the ephors to a state official, 
who was responsible for their upbringing. He was called 
the Pcedonomus. The cost of education for aU free citizens 
was defrayed from the revenues of the pubUc lands and from 
the taxes of the Perioeci. The object of this public educa- 
tion was to promote a feehng of equality among citizens of 
all ranks, and to implant in the youth of the state the feeling 
of a common interest. The Spartan youth, accordingly, were 
brought up in school-rooms, dormitories, gymnasia, and 
music-rooms, shared by all. The heirs-apparent of the kings 
were alone exempted. No Spartan was allowed to be edu- 
cated in a foreign state. The pcedonomus was assisted by 
officers called hidicei. 

Wlien received into the public boarding schools, the boys 
were formed into small companies (agelai or ilai) and these 
formed portions of larger companies, called louai. The 
older and abler boys were set over the younger and weaker 
ones as superintendents and leaders in their gymnastic exer- 
cises, as captains of the ilai and houai (ilarchai and houagores). 
' The governor,' says Plutarch, ' set over each of the bands, 
for their captains, the most temperate and boldest of those 
they called l7'ens (youths) who were usually twenty years 
old — two years out of the boys' (i 107). These monitors 
and captains were responsible to the ymdonomus alone. 

The pcedonomus (under whom were the hidicei), who was 
supreme, punished the boys on the spot for any offence, superin- 
tended their moral training and their gymnastic exercises. He 
also regulated the stories which the children were allowed to 
hear. 'Lycurgus,' says Plutarch, 'would not have masters 
bought out of the market for his young Spartans, nor such 
as should sell their pains : nor was it lawful for the father 
himself to breed up the children after his own fancy ; but as 
soon as they were seven years old they were to be enrolled 
in certain companies and classes, where they all lived under 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 231 

the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking 
their play together. Of these, he who showed the most con- 
duct and courage was made captain ; the others had their eyes 
always upon him ; obeyed his orders, and underwent patiently 
whatsoever punishment he inflicted ; so that the whole course 
of their education was one continued exercise of a ready and 
perfect obedience.' ^ (i, 106.) 

The age of the boys regulated the classification into differ- 
ent groups and classes. Up to the period of youth there 
were three classes to be gone through, from the seventh to 
the twelfth year, from the twelfth to the fifteenth, from the 
fifteenth to the eighteenth ; and there were probably as many 
more from the period of youth to that of full manhood — in 
the thirtieth year. 

Immediately on his entrance the boy's hair was cut short. 
The beds consisted of hay and straw, without blankets ; from 
the fifteenth year of rushes, which the boys were required to 
collect for themselves, without a knife, on the banks of the 
Eurotas. In summer and in winter they went without shoes 
and but slightly clad: till their twelfth year in petticoats 
(scanty woollen ones) ; after that age they had only one gar- 
ment, a kind of plaid. This plaid was a square piece of cloth, 
which was laid upon the left shoulder, passed round the back, 
drawn under the right arm, and then again thrown back over 
the left shoulder. 

To accustom them to endure hunger in war, food was sup- 
plied to them but sparingly, and that they might be trained 
to overreach the enemy and provide their own food when 
campaigning, they had permission to steal provisions, but 
with the reservation that they did not allow themselves to be 
caught in the act. Whoever caught a boy stealing was re- 
quired to punish him or to inform the pcedonomus, who then 
ordered punishment to be inflicted by the whip-bearers 
(lyiastigopliori) who always accompanied him. The disgrace 
of the boy lay essentially in the fact that he had shown so 
Mttle cunning and foresight. The ignominy of being dis- 

1 1 quote always from Clough's Plutarch, 



232 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

covered was greater than that of the blows, for blows were 
looked on as a means of hardening the young for the bearing 
of pain. Indeed, the boys had on certain great occasions to 
pass what might be called ' whipping-examinations.' On the 
annual festival of Artemis-Orthia youths were whipped to 
the drawing of blood. 'Nor must one be offended,' says 
Solon to Anacharsis in Lucian, ' when you see their young 
men whipped at the altar and streaming with blood, whilst 
their fathers and mothers stand by entreating .them to suffer 
it courageously and even proceed to threats if they do not 
bear it with patience and resolution. Many have died under 
this discipline rather than acknowledge themselves unequal 
to it before their friends and relations. Statues of them have 
frequently been erected at the public expense.' The custom 
is referred to by Pausanias, and Plutarch in his Life of 
Lycurgus says — * I myself have seen several of the youths 
endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana 
surnamed Orthia' (i. 109). 

Led by the ilarchai and houagores the boys went through 
the gymnastic curriculum under the direction of the pcedono- 
mus and his subordinate hidicei. Gymnastic exercises, indeed, 
formed the chief instrument of education in Sparta. The 
Dorians had cherished them from time immemorial, and 
Lycurgus, who is said to have been one of the founders of 
the Olympic games, had regulated them by law. It was an 
organised and graduated gymnastic system. The exercises 
were meant neither to form athletes, nor to promote acrobatic 
dexterity, or beauty of form, but solely to develop qualities 
serviceable in war. They were performed in the gymnasia 
(probably in the morning before breakfast and in the after- 
noon before the evening meal), and generally naked. The 
exercises consisted principally in running, leaping, fighting, 
riding, swimming, throwing the discus, and (as the boys 
grew older) hunting. 

The little boys began with running and leaping. At the 
same time they practised playing at ball to strengthen the 
arms. In the advanced classes the principal exercises were 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 233 

military evolutions ; also wrestling, throwing the quoit, and 
hurling the spear. Some say that the pancratmm — a personal 
contest in which any means might 1 e taken of defeating an 
opponent — was discouraged, because it might disfigure the 
face and cause such serious injuries of other kinds as to unfit 
for war. But there can, I think, be no doubt that it existed 
and was encouraged. Not to speak of other authorities, we 
find it referred to in Plato's ' Laws,' and even so late as 
Cicero it might be seen. In the ' Tusc. Disp.' v. 27, he says : 
— ' Adolescentium greges Lacedoemone vidimus ipsi incredi- 
bili contentione certantes pugnis, calcibus, unguibus, morsu 
denique, quum exanimarentur priusquam victos se fateren- 
tur.' Pausanias also speaks of the personal contests which 
were carried on in the island of Platanistas. He tells of the 
eyes being torn from their sockets in these encounters. 

With the gymnastic exercises were conjoined exercises in 
dancing. The chief kinds of dance in use in Sparta were 
war-dances. When the boys had learned to march to the 
time of the cithara and wind instruments, instruction in the 
rudiments of the war-dance soon followed. This Pyrrhic 
dance (which Thaletas had brought from Crete to Sparta), 
according to Plato, represented the cautious movements 
necessary for avoiding blows and assaults of an enemy, as 
well as all movements suited to attack, e.g. springing to the 
side, drawing back, bending down to the earth, and springing 
up again. The Pyrrhic was also danced in armour, and in 
companies, in which case the movements of attack and de- 
fence were gone through in whole masses to the rhythm of 
the music. In addition to war-dances there were also the 
choral dances, which formed part of divine worship, repre- 
senting mythical events and giving expression to religious 
feelings. The Caryatic dance was danced annually by the 
maidens in honour of Diana, and the Bihasis by boys and girls 
together. In this dance they sprang into the air and struck 
themselves behind with the feet. 

We must never forget, however, that even the Spartan 
Greek looked with contempt on athletic training for its own 



234 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

sake. He did not, as has been already remarked, aim at 
making athletes. Men trained simply to run, and others 
trained only to box, could give only a disproportionate 
development to the human frame. The Spartans, it is said, 
had no separate institutions called gymnasia ; but in truth 
their whole system was gymnastic, and they pursued every 
kind of physical exercise which could give activity to the 
body and power of endurance. 

There can be no doubt that the tendency of the excessive 
gymnastic training of the young Spartans, while hardening, 
must have been at the same time brutalising, unless power- 
fully counteracted by intellectual and moral influences, which, 
as we shall see, it was not. The Spartan was, indeed, always 
hard and cruel. Aristotle sums up this whole question in 
his ' Politics : ' 'At the present day the states which enjoy 
the highest repute for care in the education of children 
generally produce in them an athletic condition whereby 
they mar their bodily presence and development ; while the 
Lacedasmonians, although they avoided this mistake, render 
them brutal by the exertions required of them in the belief 
that this is the best means to produce a valorous disposition. 
Yet, as we have several times remarked, valour is neither the 
only virtue nor the virtue principally to be kept in view in 
the superintendence of children ; and even if it were, the 
Lacedaemonians are not successful in devising the means to 
attain it. For neither in the animal world generally nor 
amonR uncivilised nations do we find valour associated with 
the most savage characters, but rather with such as are 
gentle, like the lions. There are many uncivilised nations 
who think very little of slaying and eating their fellow- 
creatures, e.g. the Achfeans and Heniochans on the shores of 
the Black Sea, and other nations of the mainland in those 
parts, some of whom are as savage as these, and others more 
so ; yet, although their existence is one of piracy, they are 
absolutely destitute oi valour. Nay, if we look at the case 
of the Lacedaemonians themselves, it is well known that, 
although they maintained their superiority to all other 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 235 

peoples so long as they alone were assiduous in the careful 
endurance of laborious exercises, they are now surpassed by 
others in the contests both of the wrestling-school and of 
actual war. The fact is that their pre-eminence was due, not 
to their disciplining their youth in this severe manner, but 
solely to their giving them a course of training, while 
other nations with wliom they had to contend did not. Now 
it is right that we should base our judgment not upon their 
achievements in the past but at the present day ; for at 
present they have competitors in their educational system, 
whereas in past times they had none. We may conclude, 
then, that it is not the brutal element in men but the ele- 
ment of nobleness which should hold the first place — for 
the power of encountering noble perils must belong, not to a 
wolf nor to any other brute, but only to a brave man — and 
that to give up our children overmuch to bodily exercises 
and leave them uninstructed in the true essentials, i.e. in the 
rudiments of education, is in effect to degrade them to the 
level of mechanics by rendering them useless in a states- 
man's hands for any purpose except one, and, as our argu- 
ment shows, not so useful as other people even for this.' ^ 
(' The Politics of Aristotle,' Book V. page 229.) 

(b) Intellectual and Moral Education. — Intellectual, 
moral, and aesthetic education were all included by the 
Greeks under the general designation music. 'Gymnastic 
for the body, music for the mind,' says Plato. This term, 
however, was frequently used (I think, always by Aristotle) 
in the narrower sense in whicli it is now employed. Gram- 
mata and mousike (in its narrower acceptation) together 
constituted Mousike in its larger sense. Now the training 
of the mind was in Sparta, as we might expect, essentially 
and almost exclusively represented by the instruction in 
music in the narrower acceptation of the word. Music was 
practised in order by its means to rouse the mind to bravery 
and patriotism. But it was always married to words — 
poems celebrating the glory of the gods, and also the deeds 
1 In (juoting from Aristotle I take Welldon's translation. 



236 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

of heroes. It is generally said that the boys and youths 
learned to play the cithara, but I cannot reconcile this with 
Arist. ' Polit.' v. 5, where it is said that the Spartans took 
pleasure in music and could judge it, but did not themselves 
learn it. They certainly sang. The songs were chiefly 
choric and were national, rather than personal, in their sen- 
timent. It was the custom, according to Plutarch, to call on 
the boys to sing after supper. The chants that were 
approved by the ephors, sung in the manly and grave Doric 
style, were meant to instil into the hearts of the young 
citizens the moral elements of the Spartan life, viz. courage 
and discipline, a noble pride, contempt of cowardly and 
servile ways, the seriousness of existence, and the worthiness 
of effort. The laws of Lycurgus also, which Thaletas had 
set to music, were committed to memory and chanted, just 
as the Cretan laws were chanted in Crete. But the music 
had ever to remain grave and measured. Plutarch says: 
' Their songs had a life and spirit in them that inflamed and 
possessed men's minds with an enthusiasm and ardour for 
action ; the style of them was plain and without affectation ; 
the subject always serious and moral ; most usually it was in 
praise of such men as had died in defence of the country, or 
in derision of those that had been cowards : the former they 
declared happy and glorified ; the life of the latter they 
described as most miserable and abject. Indeed, if w^e will 
take the pains to consider their compositions, some of which 
were still extant in our days, and the airs on the flute to 
which they marched when going to battle, we shall find that 
Terpander and Pindar had reason to say that music and 
valour were allied. The former says of Lacedsemon : 

The spear and song in her do meet 
And Justice walks about her street ; 



and Pindar : 



Councils of wise elders here, 

And the young men's conquering spear, 

And dance, and song, and joy appear ; 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 237 

both describing the Spartans as no less musical than war- 
like ; in the words of one of their own poets : 

With the iron stern and sharp 
Comes the playing of the harp. 

For, indeed, before they engaged in battle, the king first 
sacrificed to the Muses, in all likelihood to put them in mind 
of the manner of their education and of the judgment that 
would be passed upon their actions, and thereby to animate 
them to the performance of exploits that should deserve a 
record.' (112 and 113.) We must not forget, too, that 
some of the most celebrated lyric poets were Spartans or at 
least Dorians. 

The music of the Spartans was, however, very limited in 
its range. It is said that when the musician Phrynis came 
from Lesbos to Sparta with a new-stringed cithara, the ephor 
then in power cut off two of the strings. And in the same 
way, the eleven-stringed cithara is said to have been taken 
by the ephors in Sparta from the pupil of Phrynis, Timotheus 
of Miletus, and hung up in the music-hall in the market 
place. They remained as constant to the seven-stringed 
cithara of Terpander as to the Doric style of melody. All 
this contradicts Aristotle's opinion. 

The power of music in forming the character was recog- 
nised by the ancient Egyptians, and still more by the Greeks, 
to an extent which to us moderns is almost unintelligible. 
Of this Grote (ii. 190) says : ' The Doric mode created a 
settled and dehberate resolution exempt alike from the 
desponding and impetuous sentiments. . . . The marked 
ethical effects produced by these modes in ancient times are 
facts perfectly well attested, however difficult they may be to 
explain on any general theory of music' The tradition 
regarding Pythagoras is that he had organised melodies and 
harmonies so as to suit different affections and passions of 
the soul. Milton's well-known lines in the first book of 
' Paradise Lost ' naturally occur to us here ; 



238 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Anon they move 
In phalanx perfect to the Dorian mood 
Of flutes and soft recorders ; such as raised 
To height of noblest temper heroes old 
Arming to battle, and instead of rage 
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved 
With dread of death, to flight or foul retreat. 

Heading and writing formed, as may be supposed, no 
necessary part of the Spartan system of education, although 
no one was forbidden to acquire skill in them, and there were 
adventure schoolmasters in Sparta for boys. Plutarch says : 
' Eeading and writing they gave them just enough to serve 
their turn : their chief care was to make them good subjects 
and to teach them to endure pain and to conquer in battle.' 
(i. 106.) But the boys had to learn by heart the laws and 
pieces of poetry, which they sang ; and also Homer. The 
majority of boys, we cannot doubt, learned to read and write 
after manuscripts came into use, but freemen could find a 
truly worthy occupation only in gymnastic, war, and hunting. 
Professor Ussing (p. 78), resting on a passage in Isocrates 
(' Panathen.' 209), says that many could neither read nor 
write even in the fourth century B.C. In truth, we find that 
all states, while engaged in moulding their civic life and 
holding their own against enemies, necessarily look on 
literary pursuits with a certain contempt. The medieval 
Baron was proud to be able to say that his sons could not 
write : 

Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine 
Save Gawain ne'er could pen a line. 

Alarmion, vi. 15. 

The only literature acceptable in the earliest stages of 
social life is, first, war-songs and ballads descriptive of 
personal prowess, and, secondly, hymns to the gods, and, 
thirdly, songs of lamentation and joy. These, and Homer 
to boot, the Spartan boy knew although he could not read. 
We are apt in these days to forget that we may have a 



THE ARYAN- OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 239 

highly civilised people without schools of instruction, and, 
on the other hand that schools may cover a country and 
the people yet remain uncivilised. 

Foreign systems of trainmg and the sciences, were, as 
might be expected, not admitted, with the exception of 
mental arithmetic for practical purposes. And, although 
after the Peloponnesian War (B.C. 431-404) grammarians 
and rhetoricians are found, yet the statement (whether it 
be fact or fable) is characteristic, namely, that Cephisophos 
was banished from the town because he declared that he 
could speak the whole day long on any given subject. 
Ehetoric had no home in Sparta. Tragedies and comedies 
were also forbidden. All purely scientific and learned occu- 
pations were held in low esteem. 

In brief, the idea of discipline, bodily and mental, gov- 
erned the education of the Spartans ; but a certain religious 
and civic training was obtained through their songs and 
tales and their rhythmical laws. 

3. The Education of the Young Men 

On entering their eighteenth year, the youths left the 
public school-houses for boys. It was the practice for 
grown men to choose boys or youths as favourites, and to 
be responsible for their training. They were expected to 
set an example of all manly excellence to their pupils. For 
their acts, it is said, the man was even punishable. From 
the eighteenth till their twentieth year they were called 
melleirencs (budding youths), and were allowed to let their 
hair and beard grow. They were now principally exercised 
in arms, and occupied with drill and in skirmishing. From 
the twentieth to the thirtieth year their name was eirenes, 
youths ; they lived in separate barracks and were compelled, 
under superintendence of the hidiwi to apply themselves to 
the prescribed bodily exercises. The more specific military 
training was now begun. The most distinguished youths 
were admitted into the troop of 300 knights, who, in peace, 



240 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

were at disposal of the ephors, and in war accompanied each 
king into the field, by a hundred at a time. 

An inscription found in Crete shows that the Cretan 
and Spartan youth took a public oath to serve the state 
(probably similar to that which we shall quote in the 
chapter on Athenian education). At what age they took 
the oath is not stated — doubtless when they were twenty 
years of age and were called Ircns. 

' The discipline of the boys,' says Plutarch, ' continued 
still after they were full-grown men. No one was allowed 
to live after his own fancy, but the city was a sort of 
camp in which every man had his share of provisions and 
business set out, and looked upon himself as not born to 
serve his own ends but the interest of his country. There- 
fore, if they were commanded nothing else, they went to 
see the boys perform their exercises, to teach them some- 
thing useful, or to learn it themselves of those who knew 
better. And, indeed, one of the greatest and highest bless- 
ings Lycurgus procured his people was the abundance of 
leisure, which proceeded from his forbidding to them the 
exercise of any mean or mechanical trade. . . . All their 
time, except when they were in the field, was taken up by 
choral dances and festivals, in hunting and in attendance 
on the exercise grounds and places of public conversation.' 

The Spartan youth was not considered a full-grown man 
and a member of the public assembly till his thirtieth year. 

At certain festivals there were public exhibitions of the 
exercises which the youth had practised in the gymnasium, 
and of their attainments in music. On the Platanistas (to 
which I have already referred, an island formed by two 
small rivulets, and shaded by plane trees) the melleirenes 
annually fought a battle. At the Karneia, the chief festival 
in honour of Apollo, which the Spartans celebrated in 
August, the youth in a body had to make a display of the 
entire round of their musical, orchestric, and gymnastic ac- 
complishments. On a special spot in the market-place they 
year by year danced the choral dances in honour of Apollo ; 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 241 

here were heard the chants of Thaletas and Alcmaeon ; here 
gymnastic games were celebrated in presence of the kings 
and all the authorities. On such festal days the chorus of 
old men sang : ' We once were men full of vigour ! ' and the 
chorus of the men answered, ' But we are so now ; if you 
care, try it.' Whereupon the chorus of the boys repeated, 
' We shall one day be still more vigorous.' This fragment, 
attributed to Tyrtseus, is preserved in Plutarch (' Lye' 21). 

The social customs of the free citizens were part of the 
education of youth from the first, and for a long period the 
men dined at common tables. On this point Plutarch says, 
' They met by companies of fifteen, more or less, and each of 
them stood bound to bring in monthly a bushel of meal, 
eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two and a half 
pounds of figs, and some very small sum of money to buy 
flesh or fish with. Besides this, when any of them made 
sacrifice to the gods, they always sent a dole to the common 
hall ; and likewise, when any of them had been hunting, he 
sent thither a part of the venison he had killed : for these 
two occasions were the only excuses allowed for supping at 
home. The custom of eating together was observed strictly 
for a great while afterwards, insomuch that King Agis him- 
self, after having vanquished the Athenians, sending for his 
commons at his return home because he desired to eat pri- 
vately with his queen, was refused them by the polemarchs, 
and this refusal he resented so much as to omit next day the 
sacrifice due for a war happily ended : they then made him 
pay a fine. They used to send their children to these tables 
as to a school of temperance ; here they were instructed in 
state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen ; here they 
learnt to converse with pleasantry, to make jests without 
scurrility, and take them without ill-humour.' (i. 97, 98.) 
He also says : ' After drinking moderately, every man went 
to his home without lights, for the use of them was, on all 
occasions, forbid, to the end that they might accustom them- 
selves to march boldly in the dark. Such was the common 
fashion of their meals.' 

16 



242 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

On the subject of good manners Plutarch says : ' Nor 
was their instruction in music and verse less carefully 
attended to than their habits of grace and good-breeding in 
conversation.' 

As regards conversational training, an interesting state- 
ment is made by Plutarch (p. 108) : 

' The iren, or under-master, used to stay a little with them 
after supper, and one of them he bade to sing a song, to an- 
other he put a question which required an advised and delib- 
erate answer: fur example, who was the best man in the 
city — what he thought of such an action of such a man. 
They used them thus early to pass a right judgment upon 
persons and things, and to inform themselves of the abilities 
or defects of their countrymen. If they had not an answer 
ready to the question who was a good, or who an ill-reputed 
citizen, they were looked upon as of a dull and careless dis- 
position, and to have little or no sense of virtue and honour; 
besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they 
said, and in as few words and as comprehensive as might 
be : he that failed of this or answered not to the purpose, 
had his thumb bit by his master. Sometimes the iren did 
this in the presence of the old men and magistrates, that 
they might see whether he punished them justly and in 
due measure or not ; and when he did amiss, they would 
not reprove him before the boys, but, when they were gone, 
he was called to account, and underwent correction, if he 
had run far into either of the extremes of indulgence or 
severity.' 

The brief pointed question and the concise but incisive 
answer is still known among us as ' laconic ' and specimens 
are preserved by Plutarch in his ' Apophthegmata.' To give 
a practical training to the understanding, to have the art of 
pointed and concise (hence laconic) expression, to grasp the 
kernel of every affair quickly, to move towards an object 
with directness — this was the ideal of the intellectual 
education of the Spartans, and in this the men were expected 
to train the youths and boys, while they showed them by 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 243 

their conversation how they ought to think of affairs and to 
treat them. 

Education in Sparta, as we see, was a public education, 
from childhood up to full manhood. Each citizen was con- 
cerned in the proper upbringing of his fellow citizens. 
Every man was a teacher of the boy ; every youth had in 
every man, and in every old man, to give heed to his teacher. 
Every man, and especially every old man, was authorised 
and enjoined to chastise the erring boy and youth, not with 
words only, but with the rod, wherever he found him, in the 
street or in the exercise grounds. The boy or youth who 
resisted the warnmgs of an old man was visited with dis- 
grace and double punishment. Age, indeed, enjoyed in 
Sparta a respect which is unique in history. The young 
man stood to the old man in the moral relation of obedience, 
emulation, and reverence. The younger were required to 
give way to the old in the streets and to stand up in their 
presence. ' Only in Sparta is it pleasant to grow old,' could 
on this account a foreigner once exclaim, when he witnessed 
this veneration of the youth toward old age. 'The other 
Greeks know what is becoming — the Spartans alone practise 
it,' said an old man, who, at Olympia and Athens, was 
attended to by no one, was mocked by many, and before 
whose grey head the Spartans reverentially rose up. (Cic. 
'deSen.' 18.) 

To conclude : an iron sceptre ruled over the Spartan from 
his seventh to his thirtieth year. Flogging was the universal 
punishment ; and every boy as well as every youth had to 
dread the stick of every Spartan, besides the official chastise- 
ments of the pcedonomus, who, as ' provost-marshal,' went 
with his whip-bearers through the streets and the exercising 
grounds. Moreover, the ephors went on circuit every tenth 
day to inspect the youth, to see whether their clothing, 
dormitories, and beds were according to the regulations ; 
whether the appearance and growth of the boys was com- 
formable to the required development ; and they would even, 



244 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

it is said, whip any one who had grown broader and stouter 
than he ought to be according to the standard applied. For 
every offence, for every negligence of the boys, strokes with 
a cane or lashes with a whip were inflicted ; for the Spartans 
thoroughly believed that the strictest discipline produced the 
best men. 

The Spartan education was public in the ordinary sense 
of the word. It was public also in the sense that it was 
open equally to all free-born children. ' There are,' says 
Aristotle, ' many people who endeavour to describe the 
Lacedsenionian polity as a democracy because of the many 
democratical elements in its constitution. We may instance, 
first, the education of children. The children of the rich are 
brought up in the same way as those of the poor, and receive 
an education which would not be beyond the children of 
poor parents. And the same is true of the years succeeding 
childhood; and again afterwards, when they reach man's 
estate, there is no distinction between rich and poor. So, 
too, they all fare alike in the common meals, and the rich 
wear a dress which any poor man would be able to procure.' 
(Arist. ' Pol.' vi. 9.) 

4. The Education of the Women 

The education of the Spartan women was, like that of the 
men, a public one. To make the young women as fit as pos- 
sible to be vigorous mothers of robust children, which was 
considered the most important function of free-born women, 
a gymnastic course was on the part of the state prescribed 
for the girls. In separate gymnasia, divided into different 
classes according to their different ages, they exercised them- 
selves in hopping, dancing the Spartan fling, in running, 
wrestling, leaping, throwing the quoit and hurling the spear. 
Like the boys, they also wore the woollen under-garment, 
although a little longer, yet in their exercises slit up on one, 
if not both, thighs.^ They were practised, besides, in melodies 

1 On which account the poet Ibycus calls them the 'thigh displayers. ' 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 245 

of many kinds. On particular festivals the young men and 
maidens danced their choral dances and sang their chants in 
company. ' Lycurgus ordered,' says Plutarch, ' the maidens 
to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the 
quoit and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they con- 
ceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root 
and find better growth; and withal that they, with this 
greater vigour, might be tlie more able to undergo the pains 
of child-bearing. And to the end he might take away theii: 
over-great tenderness and fear of exposure to the air and 
all acquired womanishness, he ordered that they should go 
naked ^ in the processions,' &c. They thus grew up, through 
vigorous exercise of their muscles, exposed to the sun and 
the free air, so sturdy and strong, that an Athenian woman 
m Aristophanes was forced to exclaim in regard to one of 
Sparta : ' How lovely thou art, how blooming thy skin, how 
rounded thy flesh : what a chest ; thou mightest strangle a 
bull ! ' In spite of this masculine upbringing, the Spartan 
women were attached wives and good housekeepers, and 
there is no evidence, in the opinion of most writers, of a lack 
of propriety and modesty among the young. On the other 
hand, Plato in his ' Laws ' and Aristotle in his ' Politics ' (ii. 
9) point very distinctly to a different conclusion. 

It is true the Spartan women did not know how to spin 
and weave well, but they knew how to rule the house well, 
and at the same time, as members of the state, having a just 
view of their own position, to speak with freedom in presence 
of the men. Their dress was simple and unadorned. After 
their marriage they were veiled when they went from home. 
They seem to have been thoroughly alive to what the state 
required from all those who belonged to it, and they exer- 
cised upon son and husband a deep and lasting influence. 
Their opinion was respected, their censure dreaded, their 
commendation sought. On the great festal days to which 
we have already referred, the young women used to stand 

1 I imagine 'naked' meant destitute of any outer garment, but not posi- 
tively nude. 



246 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

round, criticising and encouraging the youth. ' Those who 
were commended/ says Plutarch, ' went away proud, elated, 
and gratified with their honour among the maidens ; and 
those who were rallied were as sensibly touched by it as if 
they had been reprimanded ; and so much the more because 
the kings and the elders, as well as the rest of the city, saw 
and heard all that passed.' And in later years the husband 
by the thought of his wife, the son by the remembrance of 
his mother, were spurred on to all that was esteemed worthy 
of honour. All have heard of the heroic women of Sparta 
who offered thanks to the gods in the temples when their 
husbands and sons had fallen gloriously in battle for their 
country (as at Leuctra, B.C. 371). One such mother slew 
her son with her own hand, because he had turned back like 
a coward from the battle ; and another — Gorgo — the wife 
of Leonidas, delivered to her son his shield with the words, 
' Either with this or upon it.' ' If the root is good,' says 
Plutarch, ' the plant also grows the better,' and puts the ques- 
tion, 'Wliy should we not in the case of men have as much 
regard for a good breed as in that of dogs and horses ? ' 

We find two poems in the Greek Anthology illustrative 
of this feature of the Spartan female character: — 

Eight sons DcT.menata at Sparta's call 
Sent forth to fight : one tomb received theni all. 
No tears she shed, but shouted ' Victory ! 
Sparta, I bore them but to die for thee.' 
Again : 

A Spartan, his companion slain, 

Alone from battle fled : 

His mother, kindling with disdain 

That she had borne him, struck him dead ; 

For courage and not birth alone 

In Sparta testifies a son. 

Of the women, then, as of the men, we are entitled to say 
that the Spartan system demanded the unconditional subjec- 
tion of the individual will to the will of the community as 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 247 

determined by law. The freedom of the individual had no 
existence as opposed to the freedom of the whole, or rather 
in the freedom of the whole the individual had to find his 
freedom. 

Now, what was the result of all this exclusiveness of 
national life and severity of discipline ? Precisely those 
results which we see flowing from an over-severe system of 
education in families and schools in these days. So long as 
the Spartan remained at home, he was all that Lycurgus 
could have desired him to be — grave, severe, brave, self- 
controlled, self-sacrificing, long-enduring, full of respect for 
his elders, full of devotedness to the state. But take the 
Spartan away from the arbitrary system under which he 
lived, and we are told that he was lax and licentious, and a 
prey (curiously enough) to that very vice of avarice against 
which so many precautions had been taken. How was this ? 
Because his morality was a state-morality, not a personal 
and individual free growth from within. There was no per- 
sonal and inner idea of morality up to which he was to live. 
Instead of this there was a civic, in truth httle more than 
a tribal morality and a tribal virtue, imposed by external 
authority and maintained by severity. The Hellenic spirit 
was unquestionably there, but it had forged fetters for itself. 
When Sparta got the better of Athens and had to lead 
Greece, it could not do it. (Spartan Supremacy, B.C. 405- 
371.) Nay, it was disloyal to the Hellenic idea. It wanted 
that breadth and elasticity of mind, that humanity of spirit, 
which could alone enable it to understand, and, by under- 
. standing, to control, others. How else than by a sympa- 
thetic understanding of the rights and feelings of others can 
justice ever be done among men ? And when justice is not 
done, a state is doomed. 

In view of certain modern opinions, it is interesting to 
note that we have in Sparta as near an approach to state- 
socialism as the history of mankind has yet exhibited — 
socialism, moreover, in the most favourable circumstances, 
because it was the socialism of an aristocracy supported by 



248 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

a slave system. The state regulated the individual life, and, 
by so doing, crushed out individuality, personal initiation, 
literary and scientific activity, and ethical freedom. Sparta, 
as an interesting educational experiment, is a valuable con- 
tribution to the history of education, but it is no less in- 
structive to the political philosopher. 



CHAPTER IV 

ATHENIAN AND IONIC-ATTIC EDUCATION 

We turn now to the chief representative of the Greek 
spirit — the Athenian, All that we have said of the Hel- 
lenic mind and of the Hellenic life-ideals, in introducing 
the subject of Hellenic education, found its finest and fullest 
expression in Attica. As in the case of Sparta, we find 
that with the Athenian, as with all true Greeks, the state or 
city was the object round which gathered all their interests 
and all their moral sentiment. Nay, we may even say 
that the city was the object of their worship, for their 
very gods were gods to them as protectors and lovers of 
the beautiful abode which their artistic hands had reared. 
But the Athenian state, in the narrow sense of the governing 
body or executive, did not unduly predominate over the lives 
of the citizen. Their democratic constitution and popular 
assemblies brought the governing body into perpetual con- 
tact with public opinion — variable and fickle, doubtless, but 
yet full of ever-fresh suggestion. The despotic socialism of 
Sparta had no place. The state did not impose its abstract 
conception of life on the citizen, it was rather the citizen in 
his free activity who voluntarily gave his life to the state. 
The individual had, it is true, no ultimate rights as against 
the state organism ; but it was felt that the state itself gained 
most by the free development of the individual. (See Peri- 
cles' speech already quoted.) Accordingly, while up to the 
fifth century B.C. we might say that even in Athens the 
morality of the individual was a civic or political mo- 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 249 

rality, the elements of personality and of a free ethics ex- 
isted even before Socrates, and were powerfully expressed 
in literature 

The Athenian education was in this, as in other respects, 
a reflex of the Athenian life. ' It is evident,' says Professor 
Wilkins, ' that a national system of education in the strictest 
sense of the term would have been wholly foreign to the 
genius of the Athenian state. To force every citizen from 
childhood into the same rigid mould, to crush the play of the 
natural emotions and impulses, and to sacrifice the beauty 
and joy of the life of the agora or the country home to the 
claims of military drill, were aims which were happily ren- 
dered needless by the position of Attica, as well as dis- 
tasteful to the Athenian temperament.' At the same time 
the state, while leaving the education of the citizen by the 
parents free, prescribed certain general rules. All had to 
be instructed in gymnastic and music. The Court of the 
Areopagus, moreover, as censor morum and guardian of 
the ancient constitution, exercised supervision and enforced 
certain laws, as we may learn from Plato among others. 
But the main controlling force seems to have been public 
opinion. 

1. INFANCY 

Gentle and kindly as the Athenian care of infants was, 
yet there is no doubt that they were often taken from un- 
willing mothers to be exposed : the father — not the state, as 
in Sparta — determined this. But we must note that Sparta 
exposed none but the physically incapable : the Athenians 
were more heartless. These exposed infants were sometimes 
picked up by dwellers outside the walls and brought up ; or 
sold as slaves. Socrates refers to the grief of a mother 
deprived of her infant for the first time, and Plato, as we all 
know, recommends exposure in his ideal state. Aristotle, in 
his 'Politics,' iv. 16, considers it unnecessary to expose chil- 
dren with a view to keep down the numbers of the popula- 
tion, because other means, such as abortion, &c., can be 



250 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

resorted to, but he maintains ' there should be a law against 
rearing any cripple.' 

On the tenth day after birth, all the friends of the family 
assembled and brought presents. The child was named by 
the father. There had been a previous ceremony of sacrifice 
and of purification on the seventh day. The infant was 
carried several times round the burning hearth by the nurse, 
followed by the mother, and hence the ceremony was called 
Amphidronia or 'running round.' There was much eating 
and drinking and congratulation, enlivened by music and 
dancing. On the fortieth day the mother paid the customary 
devotions at the temple. The child was then formally regis- 
tered by the father as a member of the city ward. 

The first care of the infant fell to the mother and the wet- 
nurse (iitthe}, and thereafter the ordinary nurse (tithene). 
In the best period of Athens the mother always nursed her 
own child. Later, wet-nurses were general. As a rule 
peasant women or female slaves were chosen for this service, 
as it was long esteemed dishonouring for free women to 
engage in such occupations ; but the slaves when engaged 
were treated as free, and as members of the family. But 
free women from the country, and even free Athenian citi- 
zens, sometimes undertook the duty ; especially after the 
Peloponnesian War, when, owing to the death of their 
husbands, they were reduced to great poverty. The noble 
and the rich Athenians usually preferred to get their wet- 
nurses from Laconia, that their children might have healthy 
and vigorous foster-mothers. The cradles consisted of simple 
trays, or wicker cots, hung like hammocks, but these are now 
considered to have been of late introduction.^ When the 
work of the wet-nurse — it lasted from a year to a year and 
a half — was ended, she was followed by the ordinary nurse, 
usually an elderly woman. She gave the child its food, 
which consisted largely, along with milk, of a kind of broth 
sweetened with honey. She carried the child out to get the 

1 See references in Becker's Gharicles, p. 24, English edition, 1886. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 251 

air, and with it accompanied the mother on her visits, and 
even to feasts.^ 

To put the child to sleep, cradle-songs and lullabies were 
sung. Theocritus has preserved or rather given his own idea 
of one of these, as sung to the twins Herakles and Iphicles : 

Tender she touched their little heads and sang : 
Sleep, baby boys, a sweet and healthful sleep ; 

Sleep on, my darlings, safely through the night. 
Sleep, happy in your baby dreams, and wake 

With joy to greet the morning's dawning light.^ 

Theoc. Id. 24, 6. 

To pacify and amuse the children, they used a rattle 
invented by the Pythagorean Archytas, a vessel of metal 
or wood with small stones in it. Aristotle condescends to 
refer to the rattle (' Polit.' viii. 6, 2) : ' It is also very neces- 
sary that children should have some amusing employment : 
for which purpose the rattle of Archytas seems well-contrived 
which they give children to play with to prevent their break- 
ing those things which are about the house, for, owing to 
their youthfulness, they cannot sit still.' 

The nurses had the bad habit of many modern nurses and 
mothers of frightening children by threatening them with 
bogies. The tales which the children heard from the lips of 
these uneducated women constituted their earliest education. 
Plato, Aristotle, and Chrysippus urged that care should be 
exercised that the tales of the nurses and pedagogues were 
such as ought to be told to the young. 

The ball was a universal plaything. As the children grew 
older there came the hobby-horse, the game with dice (made 
of the knuckle-bones of animals cut into square pieces) and 
spinning-tops both in the house and in the open air. Toys 
and go-carts and ' mud-pies ' engaged the interest of Athe- 

1 The child was not allowed to be exposed to the mfluence of the moon ; 
and from the day of its public acknowledgment by the father, it was provided 
with amulets hung round the neck that it might be protected against magical 
arts and the evil eye. 

2 Hallard's translation, slightly altered. 



252 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

nian children as of the children of all European nations. 
Then followed, at a somewhat more advanced age, a game 
which consisted in throwing slantingly into^the water small 
smooth stones and counting how many leaps they made before 
sinking (which we call ' skimming ' or ' ducks and drakes '), 
blind man's buff, trundling hoops, and all kinds of games 
with the ball, walking on stilts, leap-frog, kite-flying, see-saw- 
ing on logs and swmging, &c., &c. Girls had dolls made of 
wax or clay, and painted. Blind man's buff was played thus. 
The boy with his eyes bandaged moved about calling out ' I 
will catch a brazen fly.' The others answered, ' You will 
hunt but you won't catch it ' — all the while striking him 
with whips till he managed to catch one of them. 

At an early age the children wore shoes. Great attention 
was paid to their personal appearance generally. Their hair 
was twisted into artistic curls and drawn together over the 
forehead with a splendid comb, according to the fancy of 
mother and nurse. In the case of the girls a slender make 
was aimed at by the use of stays, &c. 

From all this we see that the early childhood of the 
Athenian boy and girl was easy and pleasant. The amuse- 
ments seem to have been substantially the same as those 
which prevail among civilised races at this day. The 
mother's influence practically ceased from the day the boy 
went to school. Indeed, the want of education among the 
Athenian women precluded their exercising much influence 
over the boys. But during the first seven years the mother 
and the nurse really laid the foundation of the child's educa- 
tion. Nursery rhymes, stories in which animals played a 
part, thereafter the rich legendary, heroic, and mythical lore 
of the Hellenic races were imparted to the child.^ A poetic 
and dramatic cast of mind was thus given, to be nourished 
in future years by the school teaching and by the pubhc 
drama and civic festivals. 

1 Quintilian says (i. 1. 16) : Chrysippus thinks that no part of a child's life 
should be exempt from tuition, and that even the three years which he allows 
to the nurses might be turned to good use. There is no evidence that the 
Spartan chiki had nursery stories told to it. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 253 

2. CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 

The play-time ended with the seventh year. Ussing says, 
however, that the age at which the boy was handed over 
to the slave-pedagogue was determined by the age at which 
he was able to receive instruction, and consequently might 
be long before seven. The place of the female attendant was 
now taken by the pedagogue, who did not impart instruction, 
but had only a moral oversight of his young charge both in 
and out of the house, and whose business it was to accom- 
pany him to the schoolmaster (grammatist) and gymnastic 
master (psedotribe). For this service they generally em- 
ployed a slave whom they considered specially adapted for 
such work, but still oftener one whom on account of age and 
weakness, or some other defect, they could not profitably 
employ otherwise. Pericles is reported to have said, when he 
saw a slave fall from a tree and break his leg, 'Lo, he is now 
a pedagogue ! ' The necessary consequence of this pernicious 
custom was that the free-born boy had but small respect for 
his pedagogue, and often grew unruly. The pedagogue had 
charge of the boy at all times. His business was to train 
him in morality and good manners, and he was granted the 
power of beating him, if necessary. The rules as to the 
external bearing of boys in the street and at table were 
extremely strict in Athens no less than in Sparta. Doubt- 
less the view the pedagogue took of his duties would not 
always be very lofty. There were, of course, many excep- 
tions. The answer of one pedagogue who had a high con- 
ception of his function and was asked what his work 
precisely was, is worth recording : ' My duty is to make the 
good pleasant to boys.' 

3. STATE SUPERVISION AND SCHOOLS 

In what branches of knowledge the father should cause 
his child to be instructed, stood at his own discretion. By 
law he was bound only to instruction in gymnastic and 
music. This is laid down in the laws ascribed to Solon. 



254 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

The first of these laws, as quoted by Grasberger (i. 2. 215) 
is : ' Every citizen shall see to it that his son is instructed 
in gymnastic and music with grammar {i.e. literature). 
Parents who disobey this law are culpable. Only those 
parents shall be supported (in their old age) by their 
grown-up sons, who have given them due education.' ^ 

The instruction was not provided by the state: the 
schools were private undertakings. But they were sub- 
jected not only to a certain moral control, but also, as I 
have already stated, to the general superintendence of the 
public authorities. Although, in obedience to the general 
order of the state, all Athenian free citizens sent their 
children to the day-schools, the length of their stay there 
must have been determined, as it is among all nations, by 
the social position of the parents. We do not need elabo- 
rate archaeological inquiries to convince us of this. For 
the poorer class a little reading, writing, and arithmetic 
would suffice. But there can be no doubt that whoever 
wished to be accounted as a truly worthy citizen of Athens 
must have passed through a certain gymnastic course under 
the psedotribe (gymnastic master) in the palsestra, the 
music course in its narrower sense under the citharist 
(teacher of music), and the literary course under the gram- 
matist. But most of the time seems to have been spent 
in gymnastic and play. 

Nor did the state provide school-buildings any more than 
it prescribed the details of instruction. But, notwithstand- 
ing this, schools {didaskaleia) were spread over the various 
' wards ' of the city and were to be found in all Greek 
towns. It was not unusual to teach even in the open air 
in some recess of a street or temple. It is probable that 
these open air schools were frequented by the poorer classes 
chiefly or solely. Of the younger Dionysius in Corinth, 
Justin, xxi. 5, says : novissime ludi magistrum professus 

1 Monsieur Girard thinks this applied only to instruction in some trade. 
But if Grasberger's quotation is correct the reference was to education 
generally. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RAGES 255 

pucros in trivia doccbat. Almost universally, however, there 
were buildings devoted to school purposes. The misfortune 
that befel the school in the little Boeotian town of Myca- 
lessus related by Thucydides is well known (vii. 29). The 
Thracians fell upon a boys' school, which was a large one, 
and slaughtered all the children. In 500 B.C. the school at 
Chios fell in, as Herodotus tells us, and killed 119 out of 120 
children. Pausanias also tells a story of a Greek who went 
mad after losing a prize at Olympia, and, returning to his 
native place, entered a school, and pushing the pillars that 
sustained the roof, brought it down on the heads of 60 chil- 
dren, burying them under the ruins. But even such schools as 
were held in buildings did not receive any state-support, and 
were, strictly speaking, ' adventure schools ' supported by fees. 
The precise extent of the state supervision of schools, to 
which I have referred above, is in doubt. The Court of the 
Areopagus existing before Solon's time but reconstructed by 
him on a more popular basis, exercised great powers over all 
questions of morals and conduct ; and this power there can 
be no doubt they exercised, when necessary, in the ordinary 
schools as they did in the gymnasia of the ephebi or youths. 
The mere fact that there was no organised school-system 
would make them all the more ready to exercise their large 
and undefined powers as occasion presented itself. They 
were ' superintendents of good order and decency,' and under 
cover of this it would be hard to say what they might not 
do. They were a check on the licence of the democracy, 
and the extent of their power would depend on the prudence 
with which they exercised it. This Areopagitic Council was 
shorn of much of its political power in the time of Pericles ; 
but we may presume that there would be little objection to 
its continued supervision of morals and conduct. Among 
much that is uncertain we may safely conclude generally 
that, through the agency of either the Sophronists or Strategi 
the authorities in Athens kept a watchful eye on schools — 
especially the gymnastic schools, but without vexatious 
interference. 



256 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Instruction began in the early morning, and by law the 
schools had to be closed before sunset. The schools of 
the better class were generally ornamented with statues of 
the gods, busts of heroes, and pictorial illustrations of inci- 
dents in Homer. There is a fragment of such a pictorial 
table in the Capitoline Museum at Rome — the Tabula Iliaca 
of Theodorus. On entering, the boy saluted the master and 
his schoolfellows. The master sat on a high seat from which 
he taught ; the pupils on benches : but whether the teaching 
was individual or collective (in classes) does not seem quite 
clear, probably both. 

4. EDUCATION OF THE SCHOOL 

(«) Primary instruction and methods — literary 
education 

The Music curriculum was divided into two parts, one 
specially literary, and one specially musical. 

In the literary course, under the grammatist, the first ele- 
ments of reading, writing, and arithmetic were learned. 

Reading. — In learning to read, children learned synthet- 
ically, i.e. they learned the individual letters first by heart,^ 
then their sounds, then as combined into meaningless sylla- 
bles, and then into words. The analytic method of taking 
words first and analysing the various sounds in them, and 
teaching these on phonic principles, is held by some to have 
been practised, but of this there is no sufficient evidence. 
' We,' says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who died about the 
beginning of the Christian era, ' learn first the names of the 
elements of speech, what are called grammata : then their 
shape and functions, then the syllables and their affections : 
lastly, the parts of speech, and the particular mutations con- 
nected with each, as inflexion, number, contraction, accents, 
position in the sentence ; then we begin to read and to write, 
at first in syllables and slowly, but when we have attained 

1 Athenseus gives a metrical alphabet, and probably it was chanted 
(Becker's Charicles, p. 232). 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 257 

the necessary certainty, easily and quickly.^ 'De Compos. 
Verb.' c. 25. 

Plaques of baked earth on which the alphabet was written 
or painted were frequently used. 

The chief difficulties to be encountered by the child when 
he began to read were the learning of the proper accents, as 
these were not indicated by signs, and the separating of one 
word from another, as words were written continuously with- 
out a break.2 There was moreover no punctuation. It is 
possible that, inasmuch as good, nay merely intelligible, 
reading, was in these circumstances, possible only when the 
sense was fully grasped, the want of separation of words and 
of punctuation may have contributed largely to mental dis- 
cipline as well as to good elocution. The manuscripts were 
either folded or rolled. If the interpretation of Dionysius is 
correct, parts of speech, &c. were taught orally before begin- 
ning to read.^ 

After the pupil was able to read, beautiful reading was 
practised — special attention being paid to the length and 
shortness of syllables and to the accentuation. Purity of 
articulation and accent were specially regarded. The pupils 
were taught the raising and lowering of the voice, and to 
bring out the melody and rhythm of the sentences, and all 
this with distinct enunciation and expression. Homer 
served as the usual reading-book ; then Hesiod, Theognis, 
Phocylides, and Solon, as well as the fables of ^sop, and 
generally 'poems in which,' as Protagoras says in Plato, 
' were contained many admonitions and illustrations of con- 
duct, also praise and eulogy of distinguished men, that the 
boys might admiringly imitate them, and strive themselves 
also to become distinguished.' At an early period collections 
of the most choice specimens of the poetic art (anthologies) 

1 This translation is after comparison of the original with the parallel pas- 
sage in De Admir. Vi Die. in Demosth. c. 52. 

2 If MSS. were always written as inscriptions were written, 

3 rd Trepi ravra irddT]. This mnst mean either the changes which may 
be rung on syllables, as when we say cat, pat, rat, or the noun-inflexion 
endings. 

17 



258 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

were used. These poems, especially Homer, Hesiod, and 
Tlieognis, served at the same tmie for drill in language and 
for recitation, whereby on the one hand the memory was 
developed and the imagination strengthened, on the other 
the heroic forms of antiquity and healthy primitive utter- 
ances regarding morality, and full of homely common sense, 
were deeply engraved on the young mind. The poems were 
explained to the pupils and questions were asked. Homer 
was regarded not merely as a poet, but as an inspired moral 
teacher, and great portions of his poems were learned by 
heart. The Diad and the Odyssey were in truth the Bible of 
the Greeks. There was also much practice of dictation and 
learning by heart of what the pupils wrote down from the 
master's dictation — a practice which continued in all schools 
and universities till after the invention of printing. In the 
Greek schools the master recited and the scholar repeated 
after him until he could say the passage by himself. The 
scarcity of books had its advantages, as it must have com- 
pelled the masters to resort, more than they would otherwise 
have done, to oral teaching in which mind meets mind with- 
out the interposition of the printed page.^ 

Arithmetic. — In arithmetic only so much was taught 
(owing, doubtless, to the cumbrous system of notation) as 
was necessary for the reckonings of the market-place. The 
Greeks attained great proficiency within these limits. An 
abacus or calculating-board was in use (but not the same 
as our modern frame), the balls having different values 
assigned to them as in the East generally, and to this 
day in China. The fingers were freely used to assist in 
calculation. 

Writing. — For writing they used in earlier times tablets 
covered with wax and a stylus or graver, one end of the style 
being flattened for rubbing out what was written. These 
tablets were often diptychs and triptychs. For the children 
who could not yet write, lines were drawn and a copy set 
with the stylus ; they imitated the copy writing on their 

^ See an interesting passage in Plato's Phccdrus. Jowett's Plato, p. 614. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 259 

knees, there being no desks. Some say they began by trac- 
ing letters which had been first lightly written by the master 
(the master guiding the hand) ; and this is highly probable. 
Sometimes they carried the stylus over letters cut in wooden 
tablets. They drew straight lines with a ruler to keep the 
writing regular. Plato thought very little of writing and 
considered that not too much time should be given to it. It 
;5vas enough in his opinion, I presume, to be able to write 
legibly. When older, the pupils wrote with pen (calamus) 
and ink on papyrus or parchment. Owing to the cost of 
parchment they practised on the back of leaves already 
written on on one side. 

Drawing. — Drawing was much insisted on by Aristotle 
(' Polit.' viii. 3). It was not till his time that it began to be 
taught in the ordinary schools. But in the course of the 
fourth century B.C. it entered largely, if not always, into the 
general education, according to Grasberger and others. It 
was first introduced from Sicyon. The drawing was on 
smooth boxwood surfaces — white on a black ground, or red 
and black on a white ground. The instrument used was a 
pencil. 

Geometry. — Highly as both Aristotle and Plato es- 
teemed geometry as a school subject, it would appear that 
it was not till the later period of Athenian education (end 
of the fifth century B.C.) that it was introduced into the 
schools. 

Geography was sometimes taught, and maps began to come 
into use about the time of Plato. 

(b) Secondary education 

The grammatist was the name of the elementary teacher. 
(The word didaskalus was used in a generic sense.) Those 
boys who could afford to continue their education went in 
Romano-Hellenic times, but not (so far as I can find) during 
the purely Hellenic period, to a grammaticus ; but it must 
be understood that the line of demarcation between these 
teachers was by no means, till later times, clear. The ' sec- 



260 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

oudary ' instruction, such as it was, was doubtless given by 
grammatists of more than usual learning, until the two func- 
tions were differentiated. In Scotland we have had a similar 
experience. 

In what did the ' secondary ' education of the young 
Athenian consist before secondary schools taught by gram- 
matici took definite form : this probably not till about 350 
B.C. ? ^ It is difficult to say. It was not till he was about 
thirteen years of age that a boy began to learn to play a 
musical instrument, and this, with the lyric poetry with 
which music was always associated and the continued read- 
ing and recitation of poetry, seems to me to have constituted 
'secondary' instruction — at least till about 350 B.C. After 
that date we know that drawing and geometry, and (a little 
later) grammar as a philological study, began to enter into 
the curriculum of those who continued at school after the 
primary period. It would be at this time that the differen- 
tiation between primary and secondary schools would natu- 
rally arise. We shall see the distinction clearly marked, 
nay emphasised, in Rome (which followed Greece in all 
educational matters) certainly not later than 150 B.C. In 
the secondary school of the grammaticus when it was finally 
recognised, grammar and literary criticism were leading 
studies, and the foundations were thus laid for subsequent 
instruction in rhetoric and oratory, into which studies, in- 
deed, the grammaticus frequently carried his pupils. 

The youths after obtaining such secondary instruction as 
was available went (from about 400 B.C.) to the sophists in 
order to study rhetoric, &c. These were the highest instruc- 
tors. I shall speak of them in the sequel. 

It is not to be supposed that the system of education 
above sketched was in any way formally organised. It 
was a voluntary and natural growth, and doubtless under- 
went all the fluctuations that are inherent in voluntary 
institutions. 

^ Isocrates assumes a certain amount of what we call secondary instruction 
in the case of his pupils. 



THE ARYAN Oil INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 261 

(c) Music in the narrower sense of the word 

Music, that is to say the chanting and singing of songs, 
was, I am disposed to think, the primary basis of all Greek 
literary education. It was common to the Doric and Ionic 
races. The music was always subservient to the words. It 
is not improbable that it was the musician, as being the 
traditionary channel for ballad and lyrical literature, who 
first (in the earliest times) added reading and writing to his 
ordinary instructions. For a considerable time, and until 
MSS. were accessible, the instruction must have been oral. 
The functions of the music teacher and the grammatist were 
afterwards separated. For a considerable period, however, if 
not always, the music instruction seems to have been given 
in the same buildings as the literary instruction. 

In the special music course, which did not begin, it would 
appear, till the thirteenth year, the Athenian youth were taught 
by the citharist to play on musical instruments, especially 
the lyre, a seven-stringed instrument (originally four strings). ^ 
For a time, after the Persian wars, instruction was also given 
on the flute, which became very fashionable, the name being 
given to any instrument played with the mouth, such for ex- 
ample as our flageolet. It was this instrument which was 
popular in Boeotia. Plutarch relates that Alcibiades refused 
to play on the flute, partly on account of the contortions of 
the face to which it gave rise, partly because he who played 
it could neither speak nor sing while so doing, and that he 
also begat in others a most decided aversion to the instru- 
ment, which on this account fell at last into contempt. The 
true cause, however, of its falling into disuse was probably 
the exciting character of the music it produced and the im- 
possibility of accompanying the music with the voice. The 
Greek flute had not the soft sentimental tones of the modern 
flute. The object of the musical instruction was educational, 

1 The cithara was more of a professional instrument, ami is discoun- 
tenanced by Aristotle. It had a sounding-board and was played with a 
plektron. The most recent authority on Greek music is Dr. Munro, of 
Oxford, in his book entitled Modes of Greek Music. 



262 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

but also to enable all to take part in religious services and 
in friendly social entertainments. ' Music,' says Aristotle, 
Book v., ' was introduced by our forefathers for the rational 
enjoyment of leisure.' 

The boys were instructed in rhythm and melody, and 
their ear trained to a feeling of the measure. This would 
be necessary to good elocution. The Greeks believed that 
by music the spirit of the young was elevated, and that they 
became rhythmical and harmonious in mind and manners. 
At the same time table-songs were learned by heart with a 
view to increasing the pleasure of social meetings. These 
songs pithily and wittily enforced homely sentiments and 
the principles of morality, patriotism, and worldly wisdom. 
The Doric strain (a minor scale) was that usually adopted 
for such purposes, and they gave it the preference because it 
was characterised by a dignified repose, and more than any 
other seemed to give expression to high spirit and to manli- 
ness. The soft and voluptuous Lydian measure (a major 
scale) was denounced as immoral in its tendency, while the 
Phrygian (also a minor scale) was passionate.^ In the earli- 
est stage of instruction, the citharist dictated to the children 
simple songs, which they were required to learn by heart. 
Then they had to learn the sustained and chant-like airs to 
which they were set. One of the first poems which they 
learned, is said to have been : 

Pallas, dread destroyer of cities, 

Thou war-din-raising goddess, 

Holy, enemy-averting daughter of Jove, 

I call on thee, 

Horse-taming, noblest virgin. 

The boys were not meant to attain professional skill in 
singing and playing : their musical ability was only to be 
so far developed as to enable them, when grown up, to take 
part in choruses and sing table-songs, &c. This was the 
direct practical aim of the instruction under the citharist ; 

1 T]ie Ionian and ^oliau had also their speciEc characters. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 263 

but the main purpose of teaching music was unquestionably 
to produce harmony and balance of soul, while at the same 
time introducing the boy to the lyrical literature of his 
country. The music teaching was never dissociated from 
verses — lyric poems or hymns. ' The poetry and music 
together formed a single work of art.' In the ' Protagoras * 
Plato says : ' They make rhythm and harmony familiar to 
the souls of boys, that they may grow more gentle and 
graceful and harmonious, and so be of service both in words 
and deeds ; for the whole life of man stands in need of grace 
and harmony.' And Aristotle and Plutarch utter similar 
sentiments ; and to these we may add Polybius. That the 
aim of music teaching was ethical is further shown by the 
stress which both Aristotle and Plato lay on the importance 
of the state controlling school-music in order to secure sound 
moral results. In short, the boy was taught music, not that 
he might be a musician, but that he might be musical. 

It was always, indeed, the education of mind and body as 
a unity which the Athenian kept constantly in view — not 
technical facility in any art whatsoever. ' To be always in 
quest of what is useful,' says Aristotle, ' is not becoming to 
high-minded men and freemen.' Even as regards gymnastic 
and music the ' professional ' was not highly esteemed. 
Plutarch says that when Alexander played and sang on one 
occasion with particular skill, his father Philip said, * Are 
you not ashamed to play so well?' 

Taking the literary and musical education together, we 
must conclude that ' the mental culture was but plain and 
simple, yet it took hold of the entire man ; and this all the 
more deeply and thoroughly because the youthful mind was 
not distracted by a multiplicity of subjects and could there- 
fore more closely devote itself to the mental food and to the 
materials of culture offered to it.' (Curtius, 'History,' ii. 416.) 

The young Greek had a rich literature to draw on. The 
intellectual and sesthetic education of the children of a nation 
is necessarily governed by its literature. The Egyptians and 



264 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Babylonians, even if they had had an organised system of 
schools, could have made little of them. The Hterary mate- 
rials of Greek national education were on the other hand ex- 
traordinarily various and abundant. To Homer is generally 
assigned the date of about 1,000 years before Christ, and he 
is closely followed by Hesiod, while the number of unnamed 
rhapsodists and banders down of national traditions of reli- 
gion and conduct and of heroism must have been great. In 
the seventh century before Christ we have in the elegiac and 
lyrical poets a natural development of the heroic rhapsodist 
and religious hymn-writer. (Callinus, Archilochus, Tyrtaeus, 
Alcman, and Sappho.) The sixth century again is especially 
the period of gnomic or ethical poetry — Solon, Theognis, 
Phocylides, and the sayings of the Wise men. At the end 
of this century and the beginning of the fifth we have again 
the lyrical poets Anacreon and Pindar ; and about the same 
period, tragedy — a combination and evolution of the gnomic, 
the heroic, and choral lyric — was firmly established by 
^schylus. In education, as indeed in public life, the poets, 
let us remember, were regarded by the Greeks as teachers of 
wisdom and as moral guides. The end of the seventh and 
the beginning of the sixth century also saw the rise of specu- 
lative philosophy, which reached its highest point in the 
fifth and the fourth centuries B.C. Oratory also reached its 
highest and finest development in the fourth. I mention 
these things because it is impossible for us to understand the 
literary side of Greek education without realising the immense 
mass of literary material by means of which the education 
could be conducted — literary material existing more or less 
(but always growing from generation to generation in quan- 
tity and excellence) for 500 if not 600 years before the birth 
of Plato in 430 B.C. 

{d) Gymnastic 

About the eighth year, physical education was begun with 
gymnastic exercises under the pffidotribe (boys' gymnastic 
master) after preparation had already been made for it by 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 265 

means of easy games in the paternal home. After the 
age of fourteen or fifteen, gymnastic took precedence of 
literary instruction. It is doubtful whether the gymnastic 
instruction of children began at the same time as the literary 
instruction or after some progress had been made in learning 
to read and write. The gymnastic exercises had for their 
object in Athens the discipHne of the body with a view to 
giving it a healthy development and a noble carriage. 

The psedotribe, as I have said, was not appointed by the 
state. Like the teacher of the day-school, he opened a palees- 
tra or wresthng school ; but he was in all cases under state 
supervision, and subject to certain state-regulations which 
had in view mainly the moral demeanour of the boys. The 
pa?dotribe himself gave the gymnastic instruction, but there 
were present also in the arena the moral superintendent or 
censor who had the oversight of morals, and the anointers 
who arranged and superintended the dietetic regimen and 
anointed or saw to the anointment of the body with oil, 
which after exercise had to be scraped off. 

The palaestra was reserved for boys and the gymnasium 
for the ephebi (youths of eighteen years) and full-grown 
men. Plato, and the Athenians generally, looked with most 
favour on games which gave room for the exhibition of the 
moral quahties of spirit (or as we should say, pluck) and in- 
telligence — mere animal force being regarded as of compara- 
tively small account. 

The exercises were graduated from the easier to the more 
difficult, and aimed at forming the body in all its stages of 
development. During the exercises the boys were arranged 
in two or three divisions. These were united at festivals, 
especially at the Hermaea. Lively games, especially games 
with the ball, appear to have been first taken up. Swim- 
ming was practised very early.^ Among the first exercises 

1 On this point Professor Mahaffy, I notice, throws doubt. Why he does 
so I cannot understand, as swimming is especially mentioned in the earliest 
laws. There was also a common phrase applied to an uneducated man, ' he 
can neither swim nor say his alphabet.' (See also Krause, p. 100, for an apt 
authority. ) 



266 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

were: standing on tip-toe, while performing certain active 
movements of the arms ; jumping ; hanging and climbing on 
the rope ; holding a weight with extended arms ; the simple 
race ; boxing, wrestling, &c. After sufficient training, more 
advanced exercises were undertaken. There was a contest 
called the 'pentathlon, in which five exercises performed in suc- 
cession by the same person were included, viz. leaping, run- 
ning, throwing the discus, throwing the spear, and wrestling. 
This had a place even at the Olympic games. The pancra- 
tium, in which wrestling and boxing together, and the use of 
feet as well as hands was allowed, seems to have been toler- 
ated, but was reserved for the elder boys; and, always at 
Athens, under certain regulations which distinguished it 
from the pancratium of the professional athlete. In the 
palaestra, attention was paid to the deportment of the boys, 
and the rod was as Uttle spared here as under the citharist.^ 
At one time music was associated with gymnastic exercises. 
Our recently introduced musical drill is consequently only a 
revival. 

Dancing formed part of the physical training ; but by 
dancing was not meant the rhythmical movement of the feet 
alone but of the whole body : and this to music. But this 
exercise, admirable as it is, did not form part of the regular 
training of the young Athenian. Thorough training in danc- 
ing was confined to the trained choral bands who performed 
at festivals and in the temple and theatre. The dances culti- 
vated that grace and delicacy of movement to which the 
Athenian had already in himself a natural bent. Indeed, it 
was of common knowledge in the ancient world that even a 
poor Athenian citizen distinguished himself among all other 
men by his easy carriage and graceful bearing. The dances 
were of various kinds, religious, warlike, and Corybantean. 
Popular dances were also handed down in which all took 

^ The proportion of time given to the palffistra and the day-school is not 
known, nor is it quite certain at what hours of the day the palaestra was 
chiefly frequented. It is understood, however, that it was visited twice a day 
1— in the morning before breakfast, and again before sunset. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 267 

part, but (as I have said above) the training in dancing was 
not a part of the regular education,^ though what we now 
call ' musical drill ' was practised. 

The ephebi — youths of eighteen years (now of age and 
capable of bearing arms) — no longer attended the palestra 
but the gymnasium, and received there instruction from the 
gymnast (trainer of professional athletes) and other teachers.^ 
Full-grown men also were expected to continue the exercises 
which as boys and youths they had practised. And on 
occasion of sacrifices at the Panathenoexi — special wrestling 
matches were arranged for them. 

(e) Moral education 

An ideal aim and a moral purpose ran through the whole 
of Athenian education. Lucian thus sums up the teaching 
which the young Athenian received : — ' We commit our 
children first to the care of mothers, nurses, and school- 
masters, to instruct them properly in their early years ; but 
as soon as they begin to understand what is right and good, 
when fear, shame, and emulation spring up in their minds, 
we then employ them in studies of a different kind, and inure 
their bodies to labour by exercises that will increase their 
strength and vigour. We do not rest content with that 
power of mind and body which nature has endowed them 
with, but endeavour to improve it by education, which 
renders the good qualities that are born with us more con- 
spicuous, and changes the bad into better ; following the 
example of the husbandman who shelters and hedges round 
the plant whilst it is low and tender, but when it has gained 
strength and thickness takes away the unnecessary support, 
and by leaving it open to the wind and weather, increases its 

1 Ussing, however, seems to think it was. 

2 The precise distinction between the palfestra and the gymnasium is matter 
of debate, but I have given the general conclusion. It would appear that in 
the latter period of Greek history the distinction was not observed as in the 
earlier. As to the age of the ephebus, some say eighteen and some seventeen, 
It probably varied. 



268 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

growth and fertility. We teach them, therefore, first, music 
and arithmetic, to write letters, and to read aloud clearly and 
distinctly ; as they grow older, we give the maxims, sayings, 
and opinions of the wise men, and the work of the ancients, 
generally in verse, as easier for the memory. When they 
read of the great and noble actions thus recorded, they are 
struck with admiration, and a desire of imitating them, 
ambitious of being themselves distinguished, admired, and 
celebrated by the poets of future ages as their predecessors 
were by Homer and Hesiod.' C Anacharsis.' ) 

Again, in Plato's ' Protagoras ' we find a better account of 
the training of the young Athenian than any that could be 
constructed by the collation of many passages from Greek 
authors; and from it we shall see that in his view the aim 
throughout was a moral one — an aim to be attained through 
literature, music, and gymnastic. ' Education,' he says, ' and 
admonition commence in the very first years of childhood, and 
last to the very end of life. Mother and nurse and father 
and tutor are quarrelling about the improvement of the 
child as soon as ever he is able to understand them ; he 
cannot say or do anything without their setting forth to him 
that this is just and that is unjust ; that this is honourable, 
this is dishonourable ; this is holy, that is unholy ; do this 
and abstain from that. And if he obeys, well and good, if 
not, he is straightened by threats and blows, like a piece of 
warped wood. At a later stage they send him to teachers 
and enjoin them to see to his manners even more than to his 
reading and music ; and the teachers do as they are desired. 
And when the boy has learned his letters and is beginning to 
understand what is written, as before he understood only 
what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of 
great poets, which he reads at school ; in these are contained 
many admonitions and many tales, and praises and encomia 
of ancient and famous men, which he is required to learn by 
heart, in order that he may imitate and emulate them and 
desire to become like them. Then, again, the teachers of 
the lyre take similar care that their young disciple is steady 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 269 

and gets into no mischief ; and when they have taught him 
the use of the lyre, they introduce him to the works of other 
excellent poets, who are the lyric poets ; and these they set 
to music, and make their harmonies and rhythms quite 
familiar to the children, in order that they may learn to be 
more gentle and harmonious and rhythmical, and so more 
fitted for speech and action ; for the life of man in every 
part has need of harmony and rhythm. Then they send 
them to the master of gymnastics, in order that their bodies 
may better minister to the virtuous mind and that the weak- 
ness of their bodies may not force them to play the coward 
in war or on any other occasion. This is what is done by 
those who have the means, and those who have the means 
are the rich. Their children begin education soonest and 
leave off latest. When they have done with masters, the state 
again compels them to learn the laws, and live after the 
pattern which they furnish, and not after their own fancies ; 
and just as in learning to write, the writing-master first draws 
lines with a stylus for the use of the young beginner, and 
gives him the tablet and makes him follow the lines, so the 
city draws the laws which were the invention of good law- 
givers which were of old time ; these are given to the young 
man in order to guide him in his conduct whether as ruler 
or ruled ; and he that transgresses them is to be corrected or 
called to account, which is a term used not only in your 
country, but in many others.' ^ 

According to Plato and Lucian, then, the moral training of 
the young Athenian was never lost sight of. The learning 
by heart of noble passages from the poets and the whole of 
the music-instruction (in its narrower sense) had the ethical 
for its aim in the large sense of that term, including esthetic. 
Homer, and the poets generally, were (as I have already 
said) looked upon as text-books of morality and wisdom. 

To manners also, which are the cutward expression of 
good feeling, there was much attention paid both in the 
family, in the street, and in the school. Grace and becom- 

l Translation taken from MahafFy on Greek education, p, 37. 



270 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

ingness of manner was called eukosmia, and throughout the 
whole Hellenic world stood side by side with the other two 
aims of education — sophrosyne and arete : — this threefold 
aim being pursued by means of a training in music and 
gymnastic. But in the boy the Greeks did not expect to find 
this harmonious, self-balanced life : he had to be educated to 
it. The chief virtue of the boy was reverence for his elders, 
modesty of demeanour, and a keen susceptibility to praise 
and blame. 

As a result of all this, we find that not only a penetrating 
and active intelligence, but also grace of manner and refine- 
ment of speech specially distinguished the Athenian Greek. 
Cicero (' De Orat.' iii. 11) refers to it, and particularly men- 
tions the sound of the voice and the sweetness of speaking 
in a genuine Athenian. Even down to the time of Lucian 
we have evidence of the existence of the same characteristics. 

We naturally ask what provision was made for religious 
education. The answer is that by the worship of the family 
gods, by the civic recognition of the gods in religious festivals, 
which were numerous and stately, and by learning and sing- 
ing religious hymns and choruses religion was inculcated. 
In truth, it entered in a pleasant and cheerful way into the 
whole life of the boy and man as part of the aesthetic educa- 
tion on its more serious side. 



(f) Advanced education 

Tlie ephehi. — The higher education of the Greeks centres 
in the gymnasium. The gymnasia were state-supported 
institutions ; and, in addition to a managing president, there 
was a moral overseer or sophronist and many subordinate 
officers. The ephebi continued to frequent them regularly 
and go through more difficult gymnastic than in their earlier 
years. 

Both the moral and gymnastic training may be said to 
have received their completion in the service in the militia 
(or state-police) (beginning about the age of eighteen), when 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 271 

among other duties (especially the practice of gymnastic 
exercises), the youths had to camp out, occupy fortresses and 
patrol the frontier for two years. There were certain head- 
quarters for the ephebic companies, viz. Eleusis, Sunium, 
Phyle, &c., besides forts. It was a military service and was 
at first compulsory. The youths were liable to foreign ser- 
vice only after its completion. It certainly, for manifest 
social reasons, must have been a great burden on many 
classes of citizens, and in the later days — those of the 
Macedonian rule (340 B.C.), it became voluntary, and con.se- 
quently aristocratic. Hunting also formed part of the occu- 
pation of the ephebi. 

When they entered on this ephebic training (also as we 
have seen practised among the Spartans) the Athenian 
youths, now eighteen years of age, were formally admitted to 
citizenship before the assembled citizens, and presented with 
a shield and spear. They took the following oath in the 
temple of Athene (Grasberger, iii. 61): 'I will not bring dis- 
honour to these holy weapons, and will not desert the com- 
rade who stands side by side with me, whoever he may be. 
For the holy places and for the laws I will fight singly and 
with others. I will leave my country not in a worse but in 
a better condition by sea and land than I have received it. 
I will willingly and at all times submit to the judges and to 
the established ordinances, also not allow that anyone should 
infringe thereon or not give due obedience. I will reverence 
the ancestral worship. Let the gods be witnesses of this ! ' ^ 
Their names were now entered on tlie citizen-roll of the 
phratria or ward to which they belonged, and they now in the 
fullest sense belonged to the state. 

The higher education of the Athenian Greek did not end 
here. All his life long he was instructed by the public 

1 There are slight variations both of tlie words and translation of this oath. 
I give what seems best. Some put the taking of this oath after and not before 
the ephebic training. There can be little doubt, I think, that it was taken at 
about the age of eighteen, even before the word ' ephebus' as a specific ancj 
technical term was in use, 



272 PRE-CIJRJSTIAN EDUCATION 

drama, by the contentions and rivalries of civic life, by the 
great festivals, which were frequent and stimulating, in which 
the young men took part as members of the choral bands, by 
the superabounding development of native art, and by the 
pubHc literary contests which began at an early date in their 
history and stirred the ambition of youths while moulding 
the life of maturer men. The civic life, above all, which 
often stirred questions in which the whole of the Hellenic 
states were involved, gave a daily education to all citizens. 
A pohty is an education, says Plato. 

Whatever might be disregarded, gymnastic was never for- 
gotten. It was indeed in connection with the gymnasia that 
sophistical and philosophic teaching began, in the later half 
of the fifth century B.C., as we shall shortly see. As places 
of common resort they were analogous to the modern club, 
but they combined with this the freedom of the market-place 
and the attractions of a public park, adorned with statues of 
the gods. Studici sapientice, says Quintilian, speaking of the 
early imperial times in Eome, xii. ii. 8, . . . in porticits et gym- 
nasia primum, mox in conventus scholarum recesserunt. The 
Athenian gymnasia of the Academy and the Lyceum gave 
names to the two great schools of Plato and Aristotle. And, 
later, the philosophic schools were themselves sometimes 
called gymnasia.^ In the next chapter we shaU speak further 
of the higher intellectual education. 

I have in previous chapters brought into view the mean- 
ing of the gymnastic training of boys; as regards young 
men, the purpose was substantially identical. I may quote 
with advantage the words of Lucian : ' We teach them like- 
wise to run races, which makes them swift of foot and pre- 
vents their being out of breath ; the course, moreover, is not 
on solid ground, but in a deep sand, where the foot can 
never be firm, but slips away from beneath them ; we ex- 
ercise them likewise in leaping over ditches with leaden 
weights in their hands, and teach them to throw darts at 

1 Hence in modern times in German}- (and occasionally in mediaeval times) 
a gymnasium is the designation of a higlier school. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 212, 

a great distance. You must have seen also in the gym- 
nasium a brass thing like a small shield, round and without 
a handle or strings; you took one up, I remember, and 
thought it very heavy, and so smooth that you could not 
hold it: this they throw up into the air, or straight for- 
wards, contending who shall cast it farthest ; this strengthens 
the shoulders and gives the limbs their full power and 
agility. As to the dust and dirt, which seemed to you so 
ridiculous, I will tell you why we have so much of it ; in 
the first place, we do it that the combatants may not hurt 
themselves on the ground, but fall soft and without danger ; 
and secondly, because, when they grow wet in the mud and 
look hke so many eels, as you called them, it lubricates 
the limbs. It is therefore neither useless nor ridiculous, 
but promotes strength and agihty by obliging them to hold 
one another with all their might, to prevent their slipping 
away : add to this, that to lift up a man who is anointed 
with oil and rolled in the mud is not easy. Thus do we 
exercise our youth, hoping by these means to render them 
the guardians of our city and supporters of the commonweal, 
that they will defend our liberties, conquer our enemies, and 
make us feared and respected by all around us : in peace 
they become better subjects, are above anything that is 
base, and do not run into vice and debauchery from idle- 
ness, but spend their leisure in these useful employments. 
Our young men are thus prepared for peace and war.' And 
again elsewhere : ' Out of the gymnastic struggles another 
more noble contention springs amongst all the members of 
the community, and a crown is bestowed, not of pine, of 
olive, or of parsley, but one with which is wreathed public 
happiness and private liberty, the ancient rites and cere- 
monies, the wealth, honour, and glory of our country, the 
safety of every man's property, with every good and noble 
gift we wish from the gods. With that crown these are 
all inwoven, and to this all our toils and labours lead.' We 
have hitherto been speaking of the period up to about the 
middle of the fifth century B.C. Up to that date there is 

18 



274 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

no evidence that the higher education involved abstract 
study of any kind except for a few of a philosophic turn 
of mind. The higher education was gymnastic, in so far 
as it was compulsory. 

A retrospect will satisfy us that neither in school nor 
during the ephebic period had the Athenian a hard time. 
In the school up to the date given above there was not 
even geometry, geography, or drawing. Music, literature, 
and gymnastic summed up his education. The life both 
of the boy and the youth was easy, and by the help of the 
slave-system which relieved citizens from sordid material 
claims on their energies, the young were able to live a 
more unencumbered life than was, perhaps, altogether good 
for them. It was, however, always life ; and owing to the 
peculiar genius of the people, a life full of interest and 
freshness, and of intellectual as well as bodily activity. 

{g) School and liome-cliscijpliTie 

The school discipline was severe. The rod was freely 
used both in the literary, music, and gymnastic training. It 
is not till the times of Seneca and Quintilian, so far as I 
know, that we find any protest against corporal chastisement, 
unless we take the remark of Plato, ' Eep.' vii. 536, as such a 
protest : — 'In the case of the mind, no study pursued under 
compulsion remains rooted in the memory. Hence you must 
train children to their studies in a playful manner and with- 
out any air of constraint.' ^ It is not to be supposed that 
even after Seneca and Quintilian the severity of punishment 
was lessened. The Greeks and Romans, and after them 
Christian teachers throughout the middle ages and down to 
very recent times, associated teaching with flogging as a 
kind of inevitable necessity. 

But I commend this to general attention, that school- 
masters were held of small account. Nor do I beheve it 
possible that, while this class of the community is fitly repre- 

1 Locke uses words almost identical. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 275 

sented as holding a book in one hand and a cane in the other, 
it can ever stand high in social estimation. It is only when 
we find in teachers of youth a high conception of their social 
function as essentially a spiritual function, that the rod will 
be regarded as degrading (to the teacher, not to the boy) and 
the community begin to accord to schoolmasters that respect 
which then, but only then, will rightfully belong to them. 
And why ? Because then, and only then, will they work for 
the intellect through the intellect, for the moral nature 
through the moral nature. A resort to physical force is to 
be regarded as a sign of weakness in the educator, save in 
very extreme cases and after much deliberation. 

The domestic disciphne was more severe than we should 
have expected from the general character of the Athenians ; 
but it is an additional confirmation of the importance they 
attached to moral training. Sandals or slippers were used for 
personal castigation. Strict attention was paid to the little 
acts of life, such as the manner of sitting at table and of eat- 
ing. The manner of taking salt and bread was regulated. 
Even when the boys had reached their eighteenth year they 
were held under strict subordination to their parents, and 
their demeanour in the streets was prescribed. Modesty of 
demeanour, respect to older men, and a general becomingness 
of conduct was strictly imposed, not only on boys but young 
men. Both at home and at school and in the palaestra, the 
rod was freely used. A verse of Menander is to the effect 
that a youth who has not been flogged has not been 
educated. 



(/i) Education of the women 

The women had no school education. It was wholly 
domestic. The room in which they and their children lived 
was generally on the upper floor, to which they were mostly 
confined, except on great festival occasions. There would of 
course be necessarily more freedom of life among the poorer 
classes ; but less education. At popular festivals the maidens 



276 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

walked in procession and danced choral dances.^ On other 
occasions the girls were confined to the house, and therefore 
the Athenian women were for the most part slender and 
pale. The mother gave them instruction in all feminine 
occupations, in spinning, sewing, weaving, knitting, &c. 
They sometimes learned a little reading and writing from 
their mothers, and also singing and playing on the lyre. 
' Special emphasis,' says Schmidt, ' was in the case of the 
girl laid on moral training : propriety of conduct, chastity and 
purity, were the most beautiful womanly virtues, and domes- 
tic thrift, as well as judicious management of the household, 
the finest womanly qualities.' Woman accordingly had not 
that social and political influence in Athens which she had 
in Sparta. Her position was little better than that of an 
Oriental wife. Marriages were contracts arranged by parents. 
The wife had no part even in social entertainments. When 
her husband had guests she was not allowed to be present at 
the dinner which she had herself prepared. 

(z) Method. The schoolmaster. Holidays. School-houses 

Method. — Modes of procedure have been occasionally 
adverted to above in their proper place. As regards method 
generally, there was none consciously thought out. The 
teacher pointed to a letter and named it and the boy named 
it after him. He recited pieces of poetry line by line to the 
boy, and they were repeated until they had been acquired — 
later, pieces were written down by the teacher and copied by 
the pupil. The whole process was essentially a telling on 
one side and learning by heart on the other ; but explana- 
tions were always given and asked. When manuscripts 
became more common the master's work would of course be 
lightened and the boy's independent activity stimulated. 

1 At the so-called bear-festival, says Schmidt (Brauronia) girls between 
five and ten years of age were every five years consecrated to Artemis, 
while sacrifices were ofi'ered and a passage from the Iliad read — a con- 
secration which was meant to be the symbolic commemoration of a pure 
virginity. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 277 

There were no home lessons. Everythuig was done in school. 
Any fairly educated Greek could teach on these terms who 
had the necessary patience. I have already said that, so far 
as we can learn, the pupils came up in turn to say their les- 
son to the master. Questions of classification and school 
organisation had not arisen. It is impossible to doubt, how- 
ever, that pieces of poetry were learned collectively, as were 
the alphabet and the multiplication table, to a kind of 
monotonous chant. 

On a vase (about the date of the Peloponnesian War and 
now in the Berlin Museum) we have an interior view of a 
schoolroom : and a young man is correcting the written 
exercise of a boy, another instructs the boys in flute-playing, 
a third gives instruction in the cithara, while a boy recites 
poetry to his teacher. 

The Schoolmaster. — The day-school master did not 
take a high position. Demosthenes taunts his great rival 
with having had to help his father to clean out the school 
when he was a boy, and evidently regards the work of a 
primary teacher as a very humble one indeed. * As a boy/ 
he says (' De Corona,' 258), ' you were reared in abject pov- 
erty, waiting with your father on the school, grinding the 
ink, sponging the benches, sweeping the room, doing the 
duty of a menial rather than of a freeman's son.' There was 
no public qualification for the office of schoolmaster, and 
hence, chiefly, the low social status. It was the refuge of the 
distressed. There was a proverbial saying applied to a man 
who had disappeared : ' he is either dead or become a primary 
schoolmaster.' Lucian, long after the palmy days of Athe- 
nian education, condemns tyrants sent to the nether world 
to be beggars or primary schoolmasters. Dionysius the 
tyrant taught an elementary school at Corinth, and this is 
mentioned as an illustration of how low a man might fall. 
Accordingly, it is absurd to suppose that the aim which the 
Athenian mind had more or less consciously before it in the 
education of the young was effectually carried out in the 
schools. The aim and general method we know — the re- 



278 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

suits were doubtless often disappointing. The family and 
the state were after all the chief educators. 

Fees were paid for instruction, and hence partly the low 
estimation in which the teacher was held, for the Greek mind 
looked on paid intellectual work as casting discredit on the 
recipient ; at least till after the time of the sophists. 

It is only when the state takes up education as a national 
concern that teachers receive proper remuneration, and only 
when they are professionally trained that they have any 
status whatsoever. It appears from an inscription that at Teos 
there was an endowment for a staff of teachers in the third 
century b.c.^ This endowment provided for girls as well as 
boys. Only the children of those who fell in battle were 
educated at the expense of the state. 

Holidays. — School holidays and festivals are frequently 
referred to by the ancients. And when we add to these the 
public festivals, to which the Athenians were much addicted, 
we may conclude that the Athenian boy had an easy time of it. 

School Houses. — The school-buildings were not of state 
origin. The literary, musical, and gymnastic teaching of 
boys was all given in the houses or rooms provided by the 
adventure teachers. The gymnasia for the ephebi and grown 
men were, however, provided at the public expense. These 
were large enclosures planted with trees and adorned with 
gardens and shrubberies, monuments, temples, fountains, &c. 
All Greek towns were provided with them. In the fifth cen- 
tury B.C. there were three, the Academy, the Cynosarges, and 
the Lyceum. They served, as I have already said, the pur- 
poses of modern clubs as well as exercising grounds, and also 
in the course of time they were the centres of schools of 
philosophy and rhetoric. 

5. CONTRAST BETWEEN ATHENIAN AND SPARTAN EDUCATION 

The education of the Hellene generally was an education, 
as we have seen, in gymnastic and music — music compre- 

1 See Girard, V Education Athenienve, with references. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 279 

bending literary and moral training as well as music in its 
narrower sense. In gymnastic, including the training to 
physical endurance generally, the Spartan was much more 
exacting than the Athenian. The Athenian aimed at the 
perfect development of the body and the maintenance of 
health ; the Spartan at making the body serviceable for the 
hardest tasks that could be imposed on it. Both, however, 
had m view the moral control to which good gymnastic 
training contributes.^ Neither the Spartan nor Athenian 
gymnastic, however, is to be compared with our modern 
British training by means of organised play. In our games 
both physical and moral ends are gained in a way which 
was, I believe, quite beyond the reach of the Greek system, 
and which almost fulfils Plato's conception of gymnastic as 
an education. 

In music, again, the Spartan, as we have seen, was edu- 
cated, but only in the narrow and modern sense of the word 
music. Eeligious and national chants, metrical laws, choral 
songs, and heroic ballads were, however, taught, and indeed 
largely practised. The Athenian did aU this, but, over and 
above, he acquired skill on a musical instrument, and he 
carried out musical education in its larger and literary sense 
of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The study of the national 
literature and the cultivation of literary taste by school reci- 
tations and by the public drama, were all attended to. The 
chief instrument in the education of mind among the Athe- 
nians, was in brief, literature ; and this chiefly in the form 
of poetry. The Athenian education was (to use a modern 
expression) wholly humanistic, and yet it had a very direct 
connection with the intellectual life of the boy when he be- 
came a fully-grown man. The Spartan education was ethical 
(in a very narrow sense) and conservative, resting on law 
and custom as sacred, and admitting of no development. 

The Spartan had a restricted definite and civic aim ; the 
Athenian's aim, though never losing sight of the state, was 

1 The Boeotians, again, carried gymnastic into athletics to such an extent 
as to be hurtful to the bodily growth. 



280 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

broad as humanity itself. Reading and writing, in so far 
as they existed at Sparta, were esteemed only in so far as 
they were ' useful.' The Athenian view, on the other hand, 
is well expressed in the already cited remark of Aristotle : 
' To be always in search of the useful by no means befits 
men who are magnanimous and who are freemen.' * Give 
the fellow half a drachma, and let him be gone,' called out 
Euclid to his slave, when a pupil asked what advantage he 
would gain by mathematical study. To pursue even music 
with a view to being an expert and turning it to use, and not 
in the interests of a liberal education, was baaausian. The 
Spartan trained the citizen : the Athenian trained the man. 
Hence in all the arts which adorn human life the Athenians 
were great. They are still the masters of the modern world. 
After the school period was over, the education of the citizen 
went on, for it was a mere continuation of the work of the 
school. The drama, sculpture, architecture, painting, sur- 
rounded daily life with the noblest ideals. ' We carry them,' 
says Lucian in his ' Anacharsis,' ' to comedies and tragedies at 
our theatres, that whilst they behold the virtues and vices of 
past times, they may themselves be attached to the one and 
avoid the other ; permittiag our comic writers to expose and 
ridicule the citizens ; and this we do, as well for their sakes 
who may grow better by seeing themselves laughed at, as 
for that of the spectators in general who may thus escape 
being ridiculed for the like absurdities.' Thus was Athens 
throughout the life of each man a perpetual school in the 
best sense of that word, and not in the Spartan one. In the 
speech of Pericles, part of which we quoted in the first chap- 
ter, he is constantly contrasting Athens and Sparta, and the 
contrast in their lives we see repeated in their processes of 
education. 

Note further, that the Athenian system was a free and 
voluntary system, the state merely supervising and laying 
down general rules, while carefully guarding the morals of 
the palrestra and gymnasium. In the laws ascribed to Solon 
are found injunctions to all parents to educate their children, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 281 

and also certain rules for the schools, but these are all of a 
merely regulative character. In Sparta, on the other hand, 
the system was a state system — compulsory and gratuitous. 
Herein lies, partially, the explanation of its being so liardfast 
and inelastic. All were cast in one mould. So must it 
always be with over-centralised administration. This has 
always to be resisted by a country which prizes freedom and 
variety of culture. 

Sparta, quite consistently with its theory of life and edu- 
cation, took possession of the young citizen at the age of 
seven ; ^ Athens only at the ephebic age of eighteen. 

Again, in Athens we have professional schoolmasters ; 
whereas in Sparta worthy citizens supervise the education 
of youth. 

When we reflect on the past historical survey, we cannot 
but be deeply impressed by the contrast of East and West. 
Among the Hellenic races we first find ourselves in the cur- 
rent of a life with higher aims, both national and individual, 
than any we had previously encountered. Here, first, we 
find a people living under political conditions which favoured 
individual culture, intellectual activity, and personal ambi- 
tion. We breathe the atmosphere of liberty — an atmo- 
sphere essential to the life of mind. We also find a religion 
which, spite of the traditionary popular tales about the gods, 
was an aesthetic idealism and intensely human. But it is a 
superficial conclusion that favourable conditions made the 
Greeks : the political and social conditions were themselves 
part of the expression of the Hellenic spirit. Let me add that, 
for the maintenance of this spirit, they relied on the proper 
upbringing of youth. In nothing were Greek writers more at 
one than on the necessity of the education of the young with 
a view to a life worth living and to the security of the state. 

I have endeavoured to place before the reader the dis- 
tinctive characteristics of the education of the two great 

^ Nay, earlier, for it was the elders who determined whether a babe was to 
live, not the father. 



282 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Hellenic types. It has only now to be noted that, after 
the death of Alexander the Great, Hellenic education all 
round the Mediterranean had more characteristics in com- 
mon than in earlier times. The Ionic-Attic idea governed, 
although at Sparta many of the old customs survived for 
long after, and into Christian times. 

I have been exhibiting the general aim and current of 
Hellenic education. It is scarcely necessary to guard the 
reader against concluding that, always and everywhere in 
the Hellenic cities, this aim was consciously pursued, or that, 
even in the most favourable circumstances, it was fully 
realised. Even in the golden age of Socrates, we have com- 
plaints of a degeneracy from a level of education which was 
probably never reached. The well-known locus classicus in 
the ' Clouds ' of Aristophanes gives expression to these 
complaints, but we ought never to attach too much histori- 
cal importance to the criticisms of professed satirists or 
humourists. 

' I prepare, ' he says, ' myself to speak 
Of manners primitive and that good time 
Which I have seen, when discipline prevailed, 
And modesty was sanctioned by the laws. 
No babbling then was suffered in the school; 
The scholar's text was silence. The whole group 
In orderly procession sallied forth 
Right onwards, without straggling, to attend 
Their teacher in harmonics : though the snow 
Fell on them thick as meal, the hardy brood 
Breasted the storm uncloaked. Their harps were strung 
Not to ignoble strains, for they were taught 
A loftier key, whether to chant the name 
Of Pallas terrible amidst the blaze 
Of cities overthrown ; or wide and far to spread, 
As custom was, the echoing peal.' 

I shall now speak briefly of the higher education of the 
few in the fifth century B.C. and thereafter. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 283 



CHAPTER V 

THE HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE FIFTH CENTURY B.C. 
AND THEREAFTER 

We have seen that the Athenian youth and boy had, so far 
as school instruction, primary, secondary, or higher was con- 
cerned, an easy time of it up to the middle of the fifth cen- 
tury B.C. And, as historians of education, we have to note 
the fact that Greece was within sight of the highest pinnacle 
of its fame in arts and arms before school instruction took a 
more serious form. In Epic, Elegiac, Lyric, and Tragic 
Dramatic poetry, all the greatest work had been done before 
450 B.C., and in the subsequent sixty years philosophy, his- 
tory, and even oratory and comedy, had given many, if not 
most, of their greatest examples to the world. 

From, let us say, 460 B.C., we can detect the beginnings of 
what we call the 'higher' education, and this has of course 
to be connected with the life of the ephebi. But first we 
have to consider the historical situation. 

As Athens and the other active Hellenic centres pro- 
gressed in material civilisation and in democratic forms of 
government, the number of young men of the leisured 
classes who desired an outlet for their activity in political 
life and were ready to interest themselves in all sorts of 
questions, largely increased. Improved facilities of com- 
munication among Greek states and the multiplication of 
political and colonial relations contributed also to the 
enhancement of public life, especially after the Persian 
wars, which ended 479 B.C. We had now the beginnings 
of what is called the Athenian empire. It seemed to have 
been instinctively felt that the chances of success in public 
life, now so much enlarged and so much more exacting, 
demanded more intellectual preparation than heretofore. 



284 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

The schools of abstract philosophy had as yet engaged the 
attention of only a select few, and, moreover, did not meet 
the practical wants of the time. 

When we consider the cosmopolitan view of life and 
politics forced on the Greeks by their warlike encounters 
with both East and West and the wide ramification of 
their commercial relations, the rise of a spirit of inquiry 
and of criticism of existing institutions and their basis in 
reason was not surprising. The new intellectual movement 
sought for satisfaction. And this, quite apart from the 
growing conviction that, with the increased importance of 
the democracy came a demand on those who would succeed 
in political life to study both politics and oratory.^ 

Cotemporaneously with the rise of this new intellectual 
and political movement, there arose in the Hellenic states 
teachers who professed to give all the instruction needed 
for guidance in public hfe. These men (called sophists, 
the chief of whom were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus), 
taking up their quarters first in one town and then in 
another, offered their intellectual wares for sale, and thus 
incurred the contempt of the pure philosophers who held 
that wisdom was to be neither bought nor sold. They 
were, however, a necessity of the time. They met the politi- 
cal and educational demands of the age. 

The sophists also represented, and to some extent satis- 
fied, the critical needs of the time. As in the case of all 
other ancient nations, it is difficult to show how the beliefs, 
religious, ethical, and political, by which the Hellenic com- 
munities were held together, grew up. They passed down 
through the state (sometimes aided by a separate priesthood 
who consecrated and developed tradition) and the family, 
not as the product of deliberate scientific investigation, but 

1 As long as MSS. were scarce, speaking before public assemblies was the 
only mode of communication with the people. Rolls were for sale in shops 
before the time of Plato. There was, however, no public library in Athens 
till the Emperor Hadrian founded one. The Alexandrian library M'as 
founded in 323 B.C. by Ptolemy Soter : an example afterwards imitated by 
the kings of Pergamus. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 285 

as the authoritative voice of a remote antiquity. Nations 
held fast by their fathers and their gods — who were the 
gods of their fathers — and clung to these with an unques- 
tioning tenacity as if they alone protected their political 
life from dissolution. The day of scepticism and reason 
ultimately arrives for all such authoritative teaching, with 
what final result to the faith of man and the interpretation 
of human life, individual and social, we do not even yet 
know. The Hellenic races, brilHant as they were, formed 
no exception to this general law of life and progress. The 
sophistical movement was a revolt against authority and 
convention, but as a revolt it served its purpose by pro- 
claiming the rights of reason. 

The leading sophists had unquestionably studied the 
systems of philosophy which had come down to them, and 
were men of culture ; but the abstract speculative interest 
seemed to them to yield little that told on the immediate 
human interest. They accordingly offered to their eager 
pupils a kind of philosophy of practical life, superficial 
it might be, but still having intelligible relations to the 
world of political activity on which they were entering 
with all the ardent ambition of youth. Along with this, 
they also frequently gave scientific instruction in all the 
knowledge of the time. The more aspiring young men of 
the upper classes eagerly sought for these instructors be- 
cause they professed to give, and did, as a matter of fact, 
give, a rational though doubtless superficial, view of life in 
all its relations which could be turned to immediate use. 
They obtained all the general knowledge they wanted from 
the grammatical, physical, and moral discussions of the 
peripatetic lecturers ; but they prized above all their defi- 
nite political instruction and their art of rhetoric. Ehetoric 
had now become a theory as well as an art, and in the 
course of time unfolded itself as a system so detailed and 
so encumbered with technical details as to be, to the modern 
mind, intolerable. Still, with all its superficiality and de- 
fects and formalism, the teaching of the sophists supplied 



286 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

a want and gave the only higher education which then 
existed, or was, perhaps, then practicable. 

That the name ' sophist ' did not, as time went on and as 
rhetorical theory was dignified by the more earnest treatment 
of Isocrates, call forth contempt, is evident from the fact 
that the designation was almost universally appHed to the 
higher teachers, whether they included philosophy in their 
course or confined themselves, as was the general rule, to 
superficial science and a practical oratory. 

It was inevitable, under a system of free learning and free 
teaching such as existed in Athens and the Greek world 
generally, that evils should arise. Numbers of pretenders 
offered to give young men a rapid preparation for oratory and 
consequent success in life. These men gave their pupils the 
ready-made results of knowledge, and not training. Dia- 
logues and speeches were learned by heart, and youths 
taught to believe that a superficial acquaintance with the 
commonplaces of science — political and other — a certain 
command of the technique of oratory and the attainment of 
a certain verbal fluency, constituted education. But we 
know that there were many sophists who took a more 
serious view of their profession. Thus were brought within 
the sphere of the higher education all the leisured youth of 
the country, who aimed at public life in some form or other 
and for whom abstract philosophy had no attractions. And 
let us remember that public life under ancient conditions 
comprised many possible occupations : an advocate in the 
courts, a political speaker, including in this the whole func- 
tion of the modern journalist and pamphleteer, and all legis- 
lative and administrative employments. Apart, however, 
from these special practical aims, the higher education under 
sophists of good reputation had a liberalising character. 
Speaking 500 years after the death of Isocrates, Lucian in 
his ' Anacharsis ' says, ' We commit our youth to certain 
good and approved masters, who are called sophists or philos- 
ophers ' (the designation sophist was frequently used in- 
stead of philosopher in Lucian's time, 2nd century a.d.), 'by 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 287 

whom they are taught both to say and to do what is right 
and just, to attend to and assist the commonweal, to live 
honestly, never to seek after what is base and unworthy, or 
to commit violence on any man.' The advanced instruction 
was indeed ethical and political, in so far as it was not 
purely rhetorical. 

Meanwhile, the philosophical schools which in the fourth 
century held the tradition of earnest scientific inquiry for the 
sake of truth alone, gave a profounder discipline : but the 
youth of the country, down even to the close of classical an- 
tiquity, unquestionably regarded rhetoric and oratory as the 
main end of all their studies, to which philosophy was only 
contributory. The outcome of the whole was, that in the 
fourth century the higher or ' university ' education com- 
prised, for those v;ho desired it, philosophy, which took a 
wide range, politics, and rhetoric. For the few so disposed, 
tliere were teachers of mathematics and astronomy. The 
higher education continued to maintain this character (speak- 
ing generally) in all the towns of the Mediterranean till 
about 300 A.D. 

I have said above that the higher education connected 
itself closely with the ephebi and their rules of life. They 
were not always on military duty, and as their athletics 
were carried on in the gymnasia where philosophers and 
sophists were in the habit of lecturing and teaching, it 
gradually became the custom for many of the young men to 
attend their prelections and to engage in dialogue with them. 
And indeed, in the preceding generation it had already be- 
come a recognised custom for young men, in the intervals of 
their ephebic training and after it was concluded, to attend 
one or more teachers of philosophy or politics or rhetoric. 
The military duties of the ephebi were reduced to one year 
about the time of Philip of Macedon, as I have previously 
said, and, ere long, ephebic service became altogether volun- 
tary ; and it would appear that the youths were now officially 
expected, though not required, to attend the schools. Thus 
the ephebic period became virtually a kind of 'university' 



288 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

life — in germ at least. Even then, however, all intellectual 
pursuits gathered round gymnastic. So that we have this 
interesting result, that the military and gymnastic training 
of men above eighteen absorbed into itself what we should 
in these days call university education — at least in so far as 
opportunity went — just as the gymnasia themselves became 
the university headquarters. 

It was in the school of Isocrates (393-338 B.C.) that we 
find the best results of the higher educational activity of the 
fourth century. His popularity and fame all the world 
recognises. As Cicero says in 'Brutus,' 32: 'Isocrates cujus 
domus cunctse Grsecite quasi ludus quidam patuit atque offi- 
cina dicendi.' Plato, in the ' Phsedrus,' puts him above all 
the other teachers of oratory, ' because he has philosophy in 
him.' Isocrates, however, was not a philosopher in the 
Platonic or Aristotelian sense ; but rather a man of large 
general culture and keen political interests who, recognising 
rhetoric as the greatest of studies, because by means of it 
one might persuade men to wise political action and to a 
noble personal life, organised the teaching of this great art. 
His aim was to make a thoughtful man and a capable citi- 
zen ; but a capable citizen was one who could vjrite and speak, 
and so influence his fellow-citizens to wise courses. The 
educational question which Isocrates tried to solve was, ' By 
what intellectual preparation can this be best attained ? ' 
He always kept in view the ethical and large political rela- 
tions of rhetoric. He professed to train for public life and 
citizenship, not for abstract investigation. The Athenians 
were by nature an eloquent people ; and, altogether apart 
from practical considerations, it was to be expected that they 
would study eloquence, and that it should occupy a supreme 
place in the higher education. Isocrates at once represented 
and satisfied the national need. Moreover, he honestly 
attached supreme importance to style as the servant of jus- 
tice and virtue — being apparently persuaded that true elo- 
quence must always be the reflection of a virtuous and wise 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 289 

mind. Eloquence, he held, has for its aim the development 
of great truths and is the chief agent in civihsatiou. And 
although he saw all round him, to his deep regret, this same 
eloquence used to tickle the ears of the populace or to ad- 
vance personal interests or unworthy causes, it did not seem 
to occur to him that a higher education founded on rhetoric 
alone must be ultimately doomed to failure. In his view the 
best form and the best thought were indissolubly allied. 
Art in speech was the greatest of arts. In training to this, 
all the faculties, intellectual and moral, were trained. Assum- 
ing a good preliminary secondary education in grammar and 
hterature, and recognising mathematics and astronomy as a 
valuable preparatory discipline, he rested the whole higher 
education, thereafter, on language as an mstrument of thought. 
His pupils spent two or three years (sometimes even four) 
under his tuition. We must therefore, I think, look upon 
this organised school of Isocrates as the mother-university of 
Europe. 

As educationalists the only quarrel we have with Isocrates 
arises out of his attitude to philosophy in the sense of the 
pursuit of absolute truth — Science. But having said this, 
we then become his followers. The fit use of language as 
the expression of reason in man, and the power of using it 
eloquently, not for personal aggrandisement, but in the 
public interest, was unquestionably in those days the mark 
of the highest culture. Is it not so even now? Given 
adequate preparation such as Isocrates demanded, and still 
more such as Quintilian insists upon, there is much to be 
said for the ancient view, even in these days. 

The higher education, said Isocrates, must be (1) Practical 
— avoiding barren subtleties. (2) Eational, i.e. resting on 
the development of the whole intelligence, not on technicali- 
ties. (3) Comprehensive, i.e. not limited to the routine of 
any single profession. He felt that he could carry young 
men through a curriculum of this kind, which would not, it 
is true, make them orators if they had no natural genius for 
eloquence, but would at least make cultured men equipped 

19 



290 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

for the service of the state. If these objects were to be 
attained, the higher or university education ought to be a 
school of rhetoric and the sole subject of study should be 
' philosophy.' But of philosophy he took a wholly practical 
view. Denying the possibility of attaining to absolute truth, 
he regarded philosophy as the apphcation of principles to 
the actual work and occasions of civic and political life. 
' The philosophy of Isocrates,' says Professor Jebb (ii. 41), 
is the art of speakuig and writing on large political subjects 
considered as a preparation for advising or acting in pohtical 
affairs.' Philosophy, so regarded, could scarcely fail to 
mould the character as well as the opinions of youth, while 
giving them the practical power of using their knowledge for 
the benefit of society. And this was Isocrates' aim — sub- 
stantially an ethical one. He defends the better class of 
sophists in these words : ' Some of their pupils become power- 
ful debaters ; others become competent teachers ; all become 
more accomphshed members of society.' ^ Instead of the 
hasty preparation for future life which gave rise to the just 
criticisms of Aristotle and others on the pretentious character 
of the vulgar sophists, Isocrates carried the pupils through a 
carefully organised course. ' I always teach my pupils,' he 
says, ' that in composing a speech the first thing needful is 
to define clearly the object which they wish the speech to 
effect: the next thing is to adapt the means to that end' 
(Jebb, ii. p. 243) ; and ' the real essence of his method con- 
sisted in developing the learner's own faculty through the 
learner's own efforts ' (Jebb, p. 46). This method was 
entirely opposed to that of the vulgar sophists, who made 
their pupils learn by heart speeches and dialogues and then 
trust to their natural powers of imitation and their own 
undisciplined use of language ; ' as if,' says Aristotle, ' you 
could teach a man to be a shoemaker by showing him several 
pairs of shoes.' On the other hand, it must be granted that 
Aristotle's ' Ehetoric,' while the most philosophical exposition 
of the subject, could never have made an orator : a long 

1 On the Antidosis, Jebb's translation (ii. 144, of Attic Orators). 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 291 

course of practical study was indispensable ; and the pupils 
of Isocrates were always carried through a series of exercises 
in composition and rhetoric which were carefully prepared 
and revised and corrected by the master. 

The death of Isocrates did not affect the position of 
Athens as the world-centre of all intellectual activity. The 
ambitious, well-to-do youth of the Mediterranean flocked to 
Athens to receive their final preparation for life. And this 
not in the schools of rhetoric alone — for side by side with 
the rhetorical schools arose the great schools of philosophy, 
Platonic, Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean, as organised 
systems, each with its teachers and devotees ; and in these 
the more thoughtful found satisfaction for their philosophical 
aspirations. 

The sophistic and philosophical movements combined told, 
as might have been expected, on the lower schools. Gram- 
mar, drawing, and geometry had been gradually introduced : 
and thus a formal element was added to the purely literary 
and musical in the education of the young — especially of 
those who frequented schools longer than others. Geogra- 
phy, too, found a place in the school curriculum — almost a 
necessity among a maritime race like the Greeks. Thus the 
secondary -school curriculum was completed : but for cen- 
turies, down, indeed, to the overthrow of the Eoman empire, 
it was only a good secondary school which could boast of 
embracing a complete course. The result of Hellenic thought 
on the education of the man was ultimately summed up on the 
lines of Plato's conceptions, supplemented by Aristotle. And 
it was this : in the secondary school grammar, literature, music, 
drawing, geography, arithmetic, and geometry ; in the higher 
schools, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy (all 
scientifically treated), these leading to the supreme study, 
Dialectic in the sense of philosophy. 

In the centuries after the birth of Christ, rhetoric and 
dialectic were regarded as constituting, with grammar, a 
propaedeutic to the higher physical studies. But meanwhile 
they had altered their character, and were taught only in 



292 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

their formal and barren elements. Together they constituted 
the trivium, the higher studies constituting the quadrivium. 
These names, however, were not in use till the fifth century. 
All through the middle ages the seven studies taken together 
constituted the liberal arts. But dialectic as philosophy in 
the Platonic and Aristotelian sense had vanished from view, 
and the preparatory ' arts ' became restricted in their scope 
and sterile in their results. 

It was to the philosophic schools to which I have above 
referred that Athens continued to owe its true fame and in- 
fluence more than to the schools of the rhetoricians. The 
philosophers pursued truth for its own sake. They repre- 
sented the scientific spirit. Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, 
all had their successors.^ But, while it is true that it was to 
the philosophic teaching that Athens owed its greatness, it is 
also true that as a consequence of the great importance as- 
signed to oratory and to style generally, the higher education 
was always tending to degenerate into the study of rhetoric 
alone. A short road to oratory was the desire of young men, 

^ The connection of these philosophical schools with certain localities in 
Athens lias been briefly stated by Professor Mahaffy, as follows : 

He says : ' There were two gymnasia (in the Greek sense) provided for the 
youth who had finished their schooling — that in the groves of the suburb 
called after the hero Academus, and that called the Kynosarges, near Mount 
Lycabettus. The latter was specially open to the sons of citizens by foreign 
wives. Thirdly, in Pericles' day was established the Lykeion, near the river 
Ilissos. They were all provided with water, shady walks, and gardens, and 
were once among the main beauties of Athens and its neighbourhood. The 
Academy became so identified with Plato's teaching, that his pupils Antis- 
thenes (the Cynic) and Aristotle settled beside, or in, the Kynosarges and 
Lykeion respectively and were known by their locality, till the pupils of 
Antisthenes removed to the frescoed portico (stoa) in Athens and were thence 
called Stoics. Epicurus taught in his own garden in Athens. All these 
settlements were copied from Plato's idea. He apparently taught both in the 
public gymnasium and in a private possession close beside it ; and in his will, 
preserved by Diogenes Laertius, he bequeaths his two pieces of land to Speu- 
sippus, thus designating him as his formal successor. His practice being fol- 
lowed, the title " scholarch '' soon grew up for the head of the school and the 
owner of a life interest in the locality devoted to the purpose. Each master 
was called the successor (diadockuft) of his pr-edecessor, and the succession of 
these heads of schools has been traced with more or less success through all 
the Hellenistic period.' — Old Greek Education, p. 136. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 293 

and they more and more tended to gather chiefly round the 
rhetoricians. The next stage of degeneracy was inevitable. 
From the moment linguistic art and mere style and oratori- 
cal effect became the professed object of study, education was 
divorced from reality. A man like Isocrates could maintain 
a living connection between reason, ethical purpose, and 
speech ; but we cannot imperil education on the expectation 
of an apostolic succession of men of genius. With the 
ordinary teacher degeneracy is certain, if we do not hold 
high the scientific aim of knowledge for the sake of knowl- 
edge, living for the sake of life. Form tends to become all 
in all. Not what is said, but liow it is said, becomes the 
standard of culture. Education becomes artificial. Art for 
art's sake passes into artifice. The mind wastes its power 
over words and niceties of phrase and composition. Origi- 
nality gives place to imitation. Severe discipline in lan- 
guage, grammar, and logic is lost sight of, and technical 
forms are got up as if one could be eloquent by rule. Thus 
rhetoric itself misses its aim — eloquence. Literature and 
style interest all men, the forms of literature and the tech- 
nicalities of style are for the arid expert alone. Under the 
influence of rhetorical rules, the severe, manly, simple, and 
logical development of a theme in the interests of truth gives 
place to a weak and insipid but fluent loquacity, not intended 
to enforce truth or to guide to sound judgment, but merely 
to tickle the popular ear and to gratify the vanity, or gain 
the temporary ends, of the speaker. Living oratory disap- 
pears. Brilliant language, rhythmical sound, sharp antitheses, 
metaphors, images, and playing on words had become, even 
before the Christian era, objects of unfeigned admiration to 
the youth of the Eastern Mediterranean. 

It is usual to speak with a certain sentimental regret of 
the early decadence of the Athenian higher schools. I can 
find no ground for holding that they suffered from actual 
decay till, perhaps, 200 or 250 years after the birth of Christ. 
Their weakness lay in the commercial rivalry of the teachers 
and the growing devotion to mere rhetoric. Assuredly, from 



294 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

430 B.C. to about 300 a.d., Athens, spite of the rise of many 
rivals, remained the chief intellectual centre of the civilised 
world. Thus for 700 years at least, spite of its great Alex- 
andrian rival, it governed the higher education. Nor was 
this education always of so degenerate a kind as satirists 
would make us believe. A young man repairing to Athens 
had still the best opportunities that had ever existed of dis- 
cussing the profound questions of philosophy and science, 
and of prosecuting an extensive literary and grammatical 
course under some approved rhetorician, while entering into 
friendly student relations with youths from all parts of the 
Eoman empire. What better university education can we 
offer now, if the education of young men means the stimula- 
tion of intellectual activity in the search for truth, or in the 
attainment of professional excellence ? It is true that many 
who flocked to Athens and the other university centres of 
Ehodes, Pergamon, &c., often idled their time, and that not a 
few were content with a very superficial culture, fitted for 
mere oratorical display. But may we not, vnutatis mutandis, 
make the same remark now of every university in Europe ? 

After all is said that can be said on Hellenic education, I 
am disposed to return to my original proposition, viz. that 
the Hellenic educational idea, more or less conscious, always 
was Sophrosyne (self-control, balance, limitation). Arete, or 
excellence, and UuJcosmia, or grace and becomingness of 
bearing and expression. To say that the Greeks did not 
wholly succeed in attaining to this harmonious result is only 
another way of saying that they were human beings. None 
the less was the tendency always in the direction summed 
up by these three words. They always had a more or less 
conscious ideal of man, and to this each man was to be edu- 
cated. The whole of life, it is true, was governed too much 
by the idea of the beautiful — the artistic conception of 
human life. Hence its charm, its freedom, its want of rever- 
ence, and its saucy independence ; hence, too, its failure to 
attain, in the case of the gTeat mass even of educated men, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 295 

to a profound sense of moral law ^ waiting on all the acts 
and aims of mortals and relegating all else to a subordinate 
place. Personal truthfulness, personal purity, and a sense of 
overawing duty were not to be found in the average citizen, 
except where an attempt had been made, as in Sparta, to 
enforce them as part of the state-system of life — an artificial 
attempt at best. We have in the Greek, I think, a pure 
exhibition of the finite and aBsthetic side of human nature in 
its most charming and seductive forms. It could not endure ; 
it is not to be imitated, save and in so far as it represents 
one side of human endeavour. Only where law and duty 
are supreme, where truth and reality take precedence of form, 
and these three. Law, Duty, and Truth are recognised as the 
divine order and the inexorable command, can man attain to 
the fulness of his own personality, and mould an ideal state 
composed of citizens harmoniously educated. In the Eoman 
we find some glimpses of this fresh aspect of the problem of 
national life, and to him we shall now turn. 



NOTE ON" ARISTOTLE 



The history of education is one thing and the theoretical views 
of philosophers another. And, accordingly, were it not that Aris- 
totle in what he says really speaks in a Greek national sense, and 
is not merely a theoriser but a representative spokesman, I should 
not think it necessary to append the following extracts. 

Aristotle (pupil of Plato, died 322 b.c.) 

GENERAL 

' "What we have to aim at is the happiness of each citizen, and 
happiness consists in a complete activity and practice of virtue,' — 
'Politics,' iv. 13. 

Aristotle refers his reader to the ' Ethics ' for this conclusion, and 
tlius shows that with him education as a subject of study had a 
scientific basis in ethical philosophy. 

1 I am speaking of the Hellenic race, not of individual dramatists or 

philosophers. 



296 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

' It is right that the citizens should possess a capacity for affairs 
and for war, but still more for the enjoyment of peace or leisure. 
Right that they should be capable of such actions as are indispen- 
sable and salutary, but still more of such as are moral per se. It is 
with a view to these objects, then, that they should be educated 
while they are still children, and at all other ages, till they pass 
beyond the need of education' (iv. 14). 

The soul consists of two parts — reason in itself, and the lower 
nature which is capable of receiving the rule of reason. This we 
find in the ' De Auima ' ; but it is assumed in the educational dis- 
cussion. In educating we have to train the habits so as to secure 
the supremacy of reason. 

Up to the age of five it is not desirable to make children apply 
themselves to study of any kind or to compulsory bodily exercises, 
for fear of injuring their growth. They should be allowed only so 
much movement as not to fall into a sluggish habit of body. 
Their amusements should not be of too laborious a sort, nor yet 
effeminate. 

Great care should be taken as to the associates of children, and 
that all coarseness and foul language be far removed from them, 
since light talking about foul things is closely followed by doing 
them. 

Education, in the strict sense, begins at seven and may be 
divided into two periods — seven to fourteen, and fourteen to 
twenty-one. 

(Book V. c. 1.) Education should be regulated by the state for 
the ends of the state, and each citizen should understand that he is 
not his own master, but a part of the state. 

Also, in the same place, he says : 'As the end proposed to the 
state as a whole is one, it is clear that the education of all the 
citizens must be one and the same, and the superintendence of it a 
public affair rather than in private hands.' 

SUBJECTS OP STUDY 

Note. — We must bear in mind that Aristotle, like other 
Greeks, relegated all mechanical occupations to slaves, who were 
not citizens. 

(Book V. 2 of ' Politics.') ' That such useful studies as are abso- 
lutely indispensable ought to be taught, is plain enough ; not all 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 297 

useful studies, however, for in face of the distinction which exists 
between liberal and illiberal occupations, it is evident that our 
youth should not be allowed to engage in any but such as, being 
practically useful, will, at the same time, not reduce one who 
engages in them to the level of a mere mechanic. It may be 
observed that any occupation, or art, or study, deserves to be 
regarded as mechanical if it renders the body, or soul, or intellect 
of free persons unfit for the exercise or practice of virtue.' . . . 

' It is the object of any action or study which is all-important. 
There may be nothing illiberal in them if undertaken for one's 
own sake or the sake of one's friends, or the attainment of virtue ; 
whereas, the very same action, if done to satisfy others, would in 
many cases bear a menial or slavish aspect. 

'The studies established at the present day are, as has been 
already remarked, of an ambiguous character. We may say that 
there are four usual subjects of education, viz. reading, writing, 
gymnastic, music, and further — although this is not universally 
admitted — the art of design. Eeading and writing and the art of 
design are taught for their serviceableness in the purposes of life 
and their various utility, gymnastic as tending to tlie promotion of 
valour, but the purpose of music is involved in great uncertainty ' 
(Book V. 2). 

MUSIC — THE RELATION OF MUSIC TO LEISURE ITS LIMITS AS 

A SUBJECT OF EDUCATION 

Leisure and the noble employment of leisure is the end we must 
have in view, according to Aristotle. 

' There is no consensus of opinion as to the definition of this 
pleasure [leisure], each individual is guided by his own personality 
and habit of mind, and he is the perfect man whose pleasure is 
perfect and derived from the noblest sources. 

'It is evident, then, from our consideration of business and 
leisure, that there are certain things in which instruction and edu- 
cation are necessary with a view to leisure, and that these branches 
of education and study are ends in themselves, while such as have 
business for their object are pursued only as being indispensable 
and as leading to some ulterior object. Accordingly music was 
introduced into the educational system by our forefathers, not as 
indispensable — it had no such characteristic — nor as practically 



298 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

useful, in the sense in which reading and writing are useful for 
pecuniary transactions, domestic economy, scientific study, and a 
variety of political actions, or as the art of design is, in the general 
opinion, useful as a means of forming a better judgment of works 
of art, nor, again, as useful, like gymnastic, in promoting health 
and vigour. Neither of these two results do we find to be pro- 
duced by music. It remains, therefore, that music is useful for the 
rational enjoyment of leisure, and this is evidently the purpose to 
which it was in fact applied by our forefathers, as it is ranked by 
them as an element of the rational enjoyment which is considered 
to be appropriate to free persons' (Book V. 3). 

Music, like drawing, is to be followed as a liberal and not as a 
professional study. Enough should be learned to enable all to 
enjoy what others do, and for this a certain amount of practical 
acquaintance with both music and drawing is necessary. 

GYMNASTIC AND ITS LIMITS 

*As it is evident that the education of the habits must precede 
that of the reason, and the education of the body must precede that 
of the intellect, it clearly follows that we must surrender our chil- 
dren in the first instance to gymnastic and the art of the trainer, 
as the latter imparts a certain character to their physical condition, 
and the former to the feats they can perform. . . . 

'The duty, then, of employing gymnastic and the method of 
its employment are admitted. Up to the age of puberty gymnastic 
exercises of a comparatively light kind should be applied, with a 
prohibition of hard diet and compulsory exercises, so that there 
may be no impediment to the growth. The fact tliat these may 
have the effect of hindering growth may be clearly inferred from 
the circumstance that in the list of Olympian victors it would not 
be possible to find more than two or three Avho have been success- 
ful in manhood as well as in boyhood ; for the effect of their train- 
ing in youth is that they lose their physical vigour in consequence 
of the forced gymnastic exercises they perform. When our youth 
have devoted three years from the age of puberty to other studies, 
it is then proper that the succeeding period of life should be occu- 
pied with hard exercises and severities of diet. For the intellect 
and the body should not be subject to severe exertion simultane- 
ously, aa the two kinds of exertion naturally produce contrary 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 299 

effects, that of the body being an impediment to the intellect, and 
that of the intellect to the body ' (Book V. 4). 

Aristotle then proceeds to discuss the moral effect of different 
kinds of music, and then seems to get tired of his subject. The 
whole discussion, though full of good sense, is as a whole inade- 
quate and disappointing. 

But gymnastic, though indispensable, is only, like reading and 
writing, a preliminary ; the true aim of education is the training 
to do what is virtuous for its own sake and with no ulterior pur- 
pose. In this way alone the capable citizen can be produced, and 
one who will, further, be capable of enjoyment of the noblest 
kind. This being so, we should read the ' Ethics ' as well as the 
'Politics' if we are to form a true conception of Aristotle's educa- 
tional ideal. The process of education is, in brief, instruction and 
discipline in virtue. From this point of view the ' Ethics ' is 
truly Aristotle's prime educational treatise. What are in the 
* Politics ' called the subjects of education are in truth only the 
indispensable subsidiaries or instruments of the true education, 
which is ethical in its aim. 

Aristotle does not, unfortunately, show us how we are to pro- 
ceed, nor how best to form the noble character whose employment 
of leisure is noble. 

Plato's aim iji education is a harmonious man in a harmonious 
state. This harmonious man is the realisation of ' the good ' in 
the individual, which again is identical with 'the just.' The 
individual, however, is only a part of a higher harmony, the 
harmony which is realised in a just state. The individual is 
thus necessarily subject to the interests of the whole, and must find 
his particular harmony in and through the larger harmony of 
which he is merely a part. This Platonic conception is in truth 
a philosophic rendering and an idealisation of the Doric educa- 
tional idea. 

When we compare the Platonic with the Aristotelian educa- 
tional aim, we are struck by the more modern spirit of Aristotle. 
He does not aim at theoretic completeness in his view of man and 
the state. He takes things as he finds them and keeps his eye 
fixed on the possible and practicable. The cultured and har- 
monious man is not an object of concern with him, but only the 
capable and virtuous citizen. Virtue, in brief, is Aristotle's edu- 



800 PRE-CURISTIAN EDUCATION 

catioiKil ciiil, the virtue of the individual without regard tu an 
ideal harmony of nature or perfect culture. Let each man bo 
sound in body and virtuous, and Aristotle is content. Ho 
demands, however, that he be capable also of enjoyment and that 
he shall enjoy. He is not to be in such deadly earnest about 
virtue that lie has no vital energy left for enjoyment — enjoyment 
of a liberal and elevating kind. Where there are such men, the 
state as such may be left out of account we may almost say, 
uH,h()ugh tills is to strain Aristotle. Now this 1 consider to be 
a practical formulation of the Attic spirit as opposed to the 
Doric. It is in tlic spirit of Pericles' address to the Athenians 
in which he insists on the claims of the individual, whom Plato, 
on the other hand, would subject entirely, as did the Spartans, 
to the claims of the state. Aristotle's doctrine is the doctrine 
of freedom ; Plato's the doctrine of despotism. 

Note. — The translations are taken from Welldon's Politics. 

Authorities. — The more important liistories, viz. Raiikc, Curtius, Thirl- 
wall ; I'vucyclopicdias ; Loci classici, especially from Plato, Aristotle, Xeuo- 
phon, rhitarcli, Lucian ; Krause's Gcschichle dcr Erziehung, etc., hei den 
Oricchen, Etruskern u. liomcrn. Especially, and for details, Grasberger's 
Erziehung und UiUcrricht im classischen AUhcrthum; Miillcr's Dorians; 
IJcckcr's Chariclcs; Professor Wilkiiis's National Education in Greece; 
Schmidt's Gcschichtc dcr Fadagogik ; ^ MahalTy's Old Greek Education ; 
Capos; Ussing's Erziehung und Jtigcndunlcrricht hei den GriecJien und 
Eomern ; Paid Girard's L'Educatioii Athcniennc ; Professor Jebb's Attic 
Orators; Professor Butdicr's y/.yjcr^s of Greek Life; Tide's Outlines of the 
History of Religions. Also references to Cramer, and many others. 

1 Sentences, I think, will occasionally be found translated from Schmidt's uni- 
versal history, especially in the details of Spartan education, but only on subjects 
and points which are commonplaces. 



D. THE KOMANS 

At ilia laus est inagno in genere et in divitiis maximis 
Liboros hominem cducai'C, generi monumentum, ct sibi. 

I'LAUT. Mil. iii. 108. 

CHAPTEK I 

THE ROMAN PEOPLE AND THEIR GENERAL 
CHARACTERISTICS 

In passing from the Hellenic races to the lionian people ^ we 
enter a new phase of life, and yet one which, wliilc different, 
is, in its deeper relations to the progress of huniaiuty, of 
equal importance. The human spirit which under the limita- 
tions imposed by the Hellenic genius — self-control, virtue, 
and grace of expression — moves freely in every direction, 
mobile, subtle, living, joyous, now presents itself to us in a 
less captivating form ; but the personality of man, his self- 
conscious worth as an individual, his supremacy over the 
conditions of his own life, are in this new field of educational 
study, conspicuously exhibited. This ])ersonality does not now 
find a channel for its self-assertion in the creative faculty 
and the exercise of the imagination. On this side the lioman 

1 Chief dates in Roman History. —'Rome founded 7.53 B.C.; expulsion of 
kings and beginning of republic under consuls, .509 v.j:. ; victory of the 
plebeians in the constitution, 366 v..c. ; Pyrrhus defeated and Rome supreme 
in Italy, 275 B.C. ; end of the second Punic war and establishment of Roman 
supremacy in Spain, 202 B.C. ; Macedonia a Roman province, 148 n.c. ; H]M'm 
made into Roman provinces, 123 B.C. ; Rome at this date sufjreme over the 
Mediterranean countries. The Gracchi and their attempted reforms, 13.3-121 
B.C. ; Civil war (Marius and Sulla), 88-82 n.c. ; Oaius Julius Ctesarputs him- 
self at the head of the government, 48 B.(;. ; C.t;sar assa.ssinated, 44 B.C. ; 
Augustus CiB.sar emperor, 30 B.C. to 14 a.d. ; the Claudian emperors, then the 
Flavian emperors, 70-96 a.d. ; Constantine the Great, 306-337 A.I;, 



302 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

mind was essentially imitative. It conquered other nations 
in arms, and, while doing so, it made conquests also of 
foreign arts, and it was as acquisitions, not as native pro- 
ducts, that it was adorned by them. Much of Eoman litera- 
ture, indeed, suggests vigour of mind and the force of 
mechanical adaptation of means to ends, rather than the 
spontaneous outburst of genius. The Eoman certainly ac- 
quired Greek culture, but it was as a graft on a very homely 
Eoman stock. Their universal masterfulness was even here 
prominent. Literature was a conquest rather than the in- 
evitable expression of the popular life ; and hence it always 
remained the possession of the cultivated class alone, and was 
not, as among the Athenians, the atmosphere which all free 
citizens breathed. 

A clear and direct perception of his relation to the outer 
world, not as a dwelling-place for the gods, but as a world to 
subdue and reduce to order, was the characteristic of the 
Eoman. His bent of mind was, consequently, essentially 
practical, and, as practical, prosaic. If the Greek ideal was a 
beautiful soul in a beautiful body, the Eoman ideal was a sound 
mind in a sound body. Manliness, energy, governing power, 
intense personality, and that keen perception of the relative 
rights of men in the matter of property — a perception which 
is the natural product of an intense personality — formed the 
basis of the Eoman character. It is the Spartan and not the 
Athenian Greek with whom the Eoman has, from the first, 
certain points of contact ; but, in the former case, we have a 
society in which the individual was largely lost in the com- 
munity : in the latter, we have a strong and abiding individu- 
alism, which yet spontaneously identifies itself with the 
general good. As can easily be understood in the case of a 
nation whose genius was so essentially practical, whose life 
was so wholly a civil life, the chief legacy of thought which 
they bequeathed to humanity was their moral energy and 
their jurisprudence. The latter we still study as the basis of 
all modern law ; and this it was which, during a long and 
pritical period, combined with the influence of the Church to 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 303 

hold the civihsation of Europe together, and finally to re- 
create it. Eoman law, indeed, is itself a civilisation. 

The origin of this great people as narrated by Livy is now 
discarded, and many of Hegel's strictures are accordingly 
now irrelevant. Certain tribes of the Latin race established 
themselves on the Tiberine hills as elsewhere on the plains 
of Latium. These Latin tribes developed on the hills which 
they occupied all the elements of the civic life characteristic 
of the Latin communities generally, and they did so quickly 
under the necessities of their position as the advanced guard 
of Latium, and as masters of the river. They formed a union, 
and gradually acquired the hegemony of all the Latin race, 
further extending their dominion to the Volsci on the south, 
the Sabellian races on the east, and the Etruscans on the 
north. This, though doubtless the true explanation of the 
rise of the Roman state, has one defect (if one may venture 
an opinion against great authorities) : it pushes the theory of 
Latin unity of race too far, even almost to the ignoring of the 
mixed elements in the primitive community.^ All the ele- 
ments of the Etruscan, the Latin, and the Sabellian were un- 
questionably mixed in the Roman of history. They did not 
lie side by side as heterogeneous, but very early constituted 
a unity. 

The transference of power from the kings to the consuls 
and senate was not only a transference from a monarchical 
to an aristocratic and oligarchic government, but necessarily 
gave fresh strength and compactness to the aheady existing 
aristocracy. The senators now felt, each in his own person, 
that he was a king of Rome, and with this accession of 
dignity there was also an increase of the sense of responsi- 
bility which must have told on the gravity and seriousness 
of individual character and bearing. Hence the senate was 
truly described as an assemblage of kings. Such a transfer- 
ence of the sovereignty, too, must have made them feel the 

1 While we may set aside the Livian predatory origin of Rome, we must yet, 
I think, regard its mixed elements combined with its position as determining 
largely its character and its destiny. 



304 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

necessity of preserving as much as possible the purity and 
exchisiveness of their order in the interests of the safety of 
the state, which might have been quickly overwhelmed by 
the intrusion of the democracy. There can be little doubt 
that, had the democracy attained to that supremacy which 
characterised the Athenian Demos, Rome would never have 
developed into the Eoman Empire. A great and noteworthy 
civic community it would doubtless have been, but little 
more than this. The Latin communities would have held 
their own outside the Servian wall, the Samnites and Sabines 
would have continued to lead an uncontrolled existence, and 
the already established Etruscan power would probably have 
permanently overawed the rising state. To create and mam- 
tain an empire there must be a continuity of purpose and 
policy which is alien to a pure democracy. Whether we 
approve of a hereditary aristocracy or not, there can be no 
doubt that it conserves a tradition of individual and family 
life as well as of national policy, and thus contributes power- 
fully to the stability and permanence of a state in its domes- 
tic, and especially in its foreign, relations. At the same time 
it has its dangers, for it rests the healthy life of the state on 
one class, and the corruption of this is the corruption of the 
whole. 

The elements of weakness in the Eepublic which finally 
made the imperial form of government inevitable it would be 
irrelevant here to trace. It is not difficult now, after the 
event, to see that the growth of a city into that unwieldiness 
of bulk to which Eome attained when it became the centre 
of the commerce and life of the world, would have made 
it impossible for even a pure Senate after the mind of Cato 
himself to hold firmly the reins of power. But with the 
growth of the Roman Empire the senatorial purity and self- 
denying patriotism had, as a matter of fact, vanished. The 
personal aggrandisement for which the tributary wealth of 
the world gave such opportunities, with the corruptions 
caused by slavery, the divorce of the Italians from the land 
as free cultivators, the subversion of religious faith, and the 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 305 

introduction of those larger ideas of personal development 
and culture which Greece taught, all combined to put an end 
for ever to the assemblage of kings. The proscriptions of 
Marius and the reprisals of Sulla had also weeded out the 
ancient families, and wealthy plebeians, advanced to senato- 
rial rank, had by the time of Augustus almost wholly super- 
seded the ancient nobihty. You find now no longer the 
austere old Roman Senate, but, as an eminent historian has 
remarked, your eye is arrested by a succession of great in- 
dividuals who dominated the state. This prominence of in- 
dividuals, and the impossibility of a city ruhng an empire, led 
to the final organisation of the Imperial Government which, 
while preserving ancient Eepublican forms, preserved them 
as a mere phantom of the past, the lifeless form of a freedom 
that had been. Assuredly one cause of the corruption of 
society was the superseding of the traditionary education by 
unconsidered and unregulated novelties. The old austere 
domestic system had disappeared, and what had taken its 
place was not due to any deliberate state-policy, but only to 
the caprice of individuals — at least till after the empire had 
been for some time established. 

Our chief business, however, is with the Roman people in 
all their moral greatness and strength as factors in the world- 
history, taking first of all the period which ends with the 
fall of Carthage. We find in them great moral qualities — 
qualities, indeed, which the history of the past shows us to 
be necessary to the rise of a stable social organisation. The 
popular idea of the Roman is that of manly vigour, and the 
popular idea is correct. To this it is added by Hegel that 
he was a creature of the abstract understanding — prosaic, 
utilitarian, practical. This, also, is true, and hence we may 
find a key to the Roman character, even in the ideal sphere 
of his religion. 

Religion. — In religion the Roman was unquestionably 
serious and devout. The community between gods and men 
was not, however, understood as among the Hellenes. There 
was no rich mythology to bridge over the space that sepa- 

20 



306 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

rated gods and men. The Eoman gods were not separate 
idealised personalities as among the Greeks, who recognised 
no god to whom they did not give a concrete form. There 
was, however, with the Eoman a deep spiritual side to every- 
thing, and that the Koman abstracted, assigning to it the 
name and power of deity. The gods differed in importance 
only in so far as the abstract thought was more or less 
generalised. For example, if Jupiter and Juno are the 
abstractions of manhood and womanhood and Dea-Dia or 
Ceres the creative power, their position in the Pantheon 
would necessarily be higher than Fides (fidelity to engage- 
ments), Terminus the boundary god, Silvanus the god of the 
forest, or Vertumnus the god of the circling year. So intense 
was this spiritual perception and so disposed to fit itself 
to abstract and yet definite forms, that in the prayer for 
husbandmen, as Mommsen says, 'there were invoked the 
spirits of fallowing, of ploughing, of furrowing, sowing, cover- 
ing in, harrowing, and so forth.' In like manner marriage, 
birth, and death, and every other natural event, were endowed 
with a sacred life. This is not to be confounded with 
element-worship : it was the worship, or at least the abstract 
and reverential recognition, of the Unseen Power that resided 
in all things. The feeling of awe with which the Eoman 
regarded the gods, as compared with the joyous friendliness 
of the Greeks, is well indicated by the fact that the latter 
when he sacrificed raised his eyes to heaven, the former 
veiled his head. The gravitas of the Eoman character was 
largely due to the seriousness, approaching even sadness, 
which characterised his religion. The awe with which the 
Eoman contemplated the Unseen is also indicated in the 
word * religio,' whether we connect it with ' binding ' or 
'reflection ' (Conscience) — (I'eMgare or relegere). This relig- 
ion — the early religion of Eome — may be called an organ- 
ised Animism, but it is very seriously held. 

The supreme Eoman god was Jupiter Optimus Maximus, 
not merely as representative of abstract man, but as the 
reflection of the life of Eome as a civil life, and as the 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 307 

guardian of the state. Doubtless, the position of this god 
was largely due to Greek influence. Jupiter, as supreme god, 
was regarded also as father of men and source of all blessings, 
and preeminently the god of good faith and purity. There 
was thus a distinct ethical element in the Eoman conception ; 
for Jupiter was the god of life and light and purity no less 
than the divine personification of the Eoman State. Next to 
Jupiter was Mars, as reflecting the military spirit. A deep 
religious feeling was exhibited not only in the earlier periods 
of Roman society, but all through its history, spite of Hellenic 
influences and the introduction among the people of numer- 
ous gods. The great Scipio Africanus went daily into the 
temple of Jupiter to pray, and ascribed all his triumphs to 
the protecting care of the god of Eome. Even Velleius 
Paterculus, writing so late as the time of Tiberius, concludes 
his history with a prayer, part of which only has been pre- 
served, but which begins thus : — '0 Jupiter (Capitolinus) •' 
Jupiter Stator ! Mars Gradivus, author of the Eoman 
name ! Vesta, guardian of the eternal fire ! O all ye 
deities who have exalted the present magnitude of the Eoman 
Empire, raising it to a position of supremacy over the world ! 
Guard, preserve, and protect, I beseech you, in the name of 
the Commonwealth, our present State, &c.' Even if this be 
regarded as a merely conventional conclusion to a history, 
the fact that it was so would not affect our argument. After 
all that can be said, however, it is true that just as the cult 
of Apollo was the true religion of the Greeks, so Eome, as 
identified with Jupiter, or Jupiter as identified with Eome, 
was the religion of Eomans. 

The Hellenic gods, with their accompanying mythical 
legends, began to enter into the Eoman religious system even 
so early as the time of the kings ; but even they, so to speak, 
became Eomans. For, religious as the Eomans were, there 
was little of either the vaguely infinite or the artistic ideal in 
their objects of worship. The gods all had a practical char- 
acter, having to do with the civic economy or with social 
relations or moralities, and religious rites were used to 



308 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

strengthen some of the best habits of the people. Such a 
system, while promoting the stability of the Commonwealth, 
could not possibly afford elements for the imagination and 
for art to work upon. Even G-reek sculpture when it entered 
Eome took the practical form of portraiture and ministered 
to the pride of family. The finite aims and prosaic char- 
acter of the Eoman were thoroughly interwoven with his 
religious system, even when the primaeval form of it had 
given way to the worship of Hellenicised deities. Church 
and State were truly one. In fact religion, as Ihne says 
(iv. p. 3), ' was with the Eomans not a matter of feeling 
or speculation, but of law ; ' but, as such, it was a great 
reality. 

In the earlier period of Eoman history, the king acted as 
chief intercessor with the gods, and appointed the priest and 
priestesses — a power which afterwards passed into the hands 
of the College of Priests, who nominated a Pontifex Maximus. 
They were an aristocratic body and constantly abused their 
office to promote the power of the Senate. Subsequently the 
tribes elected citizens to the office of president, but during 
the time of Sulla this privilege was restored to the colleges, 
and in 63 B.C. it returned to the tribes. The Eoman state 
was thus free from the evils of a hereditary priesthood. The 
priest never lost his character of being a civil functionary, 
just as originally the king, as head of the civil power, had 
been chief priest. 

In the last century of the republic, the monotheism which 
had attached itself to the name of Jupiter Optimus Maxi- 
mus became more prominent among the cultured few, and 
in early imperial times we find among the Stoics and 
Platonists a behef in one overruling God and a devotion 
to ethical philosophy, which do much to atone for the reck- 
less irreligion or practical idolatry of the many. But when 
we consider the extinction of ancient tradition and belief 
and all that constituted the distinctive Eoman 'conscience,' 
we are surprised that society still held together as it did 
for so many centuries. The Eoman seemed still to draw 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 309 

strength from his past history, and an inherited patriotism 
and concentration of purpose may be said to have survived, 
in their practical influence, their own death. This Eoman 
rehgion of patriotism finds expression in the ' De Officiis ' 
of Cicero, i. 17: — ' Cari sunt parentes, cari Hberi, propinqui 
familiares ; sed omnes omnium caritates patria una com- 
plexa est ; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere ei 
si sit profuturus ? ' We shall see the firm basis of this 
intense feeling in the family and the civic and civil consti- 
tution, of which we shall now speak. 

Social Life. — The Roman family was the unit of the 
Eoman state. This could not be said either of Athens or 
Sparta. In the family we find, in its most pronounced 
form, the absolute authority of the father. ' If any one 
thing,' says Becker in his ' G alius,' ' more strikingly exhibits 
the austerity of the Eoman character and its propensity to 
domination, it is the arbitrary power which the father pos- 
sesses over his children. By the laws of Nature immediate 
authority over thq children belongs to the father only for 
the time during which they require his providing care, pro- 
tection, and guidance. The humanity and right feeling of 
the Grecian legislators led them to look at the matter from 
this point of view, and they allowed the authority of the 
father to last only till the son was of a certain age, or till he 
was married, or was entered on the list of citizens, and they 
so restricted this power that the utmost a father could do 
was to eject his son from his house and disinherit him. 
Not so m Eome. There the child was born the property 
of his father, who could dispose of it as he thought fit. 
This power might last, under certain limitations, even till 
the death of the father.' ^ ' The power we have over our 
children,' says the jurist Gains, 'is a right peculiar to the 
Eomans.' In truth we must regard the father of the family 
as both priest and magistrate. A patria ^potestas so abso- 
lute gave unity to the family. 

The practice of monogamy was not peculiar to the 

1 Excursus ii. to scene 1, p. 179. 



310 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Eomans, but the honour paid to the wife as head of the 
household seems to have been first fully recognised by 
them. The Spartan mother had a high place assigned to 
her; but, owing to the public system of education, she 
exercised less personal influence than the Eoman. Within 
the house, woman was not servant but mistress. She 
exercised a power almost equal to that of her husband. 
' Exempted,' says Mommsen, ' from the tasks of corn-grind- 
ing and cooking, which, according to the Eoman ideas, 
belonged to menials, the Eoman housewife devoted herself 
in the main to the superintendence of her maid-servants 
and to the accompanying labours of the distaff.' She was 
not relegated to private life in the ffynccceum like the 
Athenian wife. She occupied the atrium surrounded by 
her servants and children. The woman being held in such 
high honour, and her permanent position as wife being 
protected by law, she felt that on her largely depended the 
honour of the family. The high moral character of the 
Eoman matron thus became famous for all time ; and her 
influence on the character and education of her sons was 
unquestionably great. 'Do not kiss me,' said the mother 
of the victorious Coriolanus, ' till I know whether you are 
an enemy or a son,' and when liis wife fell on her knees 
weeping in support of the mother, the haughty conqueror 
yielded and said, ' Mother, this is a happy victory for you 
and for Eome, but it is ruin and shame to your son;' and 
shedding tears, fell back from the city which he had pre- 
viously doomed. We may, then, confidently accept the 
remark of Mommsen, that the ' Eoman family from the first 
contained within it the conditions of a high culture in the 
mere moral adjustment of the mutual relations of its mem- 
bers.' 'As the strictly organised family,' says Ihne (iv. 250), 
* forms the basis for the national life of the Eoman people 
and the starting point for the development of the state; 
so also Eoman morality and private economy were deter- 
mined by the influence which the same family organisa- 
tion exercised upon every meiliber of society. . . . Labour, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 311 

frugality, self-sacrifice for the good of the house and state 
were the active virtues of the old Eoman peasant.' 

The unity of the family found its centre in the worship 
of the household gods, the Penates and Lares. The penates 
were the gods of the hearth, the lares were the ' lords ' of the 
family — the departed spirits of ancestors, who were regarded 
as still concerned with the well-being of their descendants. 
The image of the chief lar, clad in a toga, usually stood 
between two penates in the atrium of the house beside the 
household hearth. This shrine the ancient Eoman saluted 
daily with a morning prayer and an offering from the table, 
while three times every month and on all festivities — such 
as birth-days, assumption of the toga virilis, marriage, or the 
return of a member of the family after long absence — sacri- 
fices were offered. The father was priest. Though evil 
spirits among the departed were recognised by the Eomans 
(as among all nations in some form or other) this did not affect 
their religious trust in the good. The gens or clan again was 
merely an enlarged familia, and as each father and mother 
were priest and priestess in their own house, so the gentcs 
had common altars and sacrifices. The state was thus made 
up of many little states, bound together by mutual interests 
and religious ceremonies. The authority of the head of each 
family was the basis of the authority of the central power, 
and the obedience and military subjection of the members of 
the famihes and clan was the basis of that capacity for obedi- 
ence and discipline which always distinguished the Eoman. 
It was the abstract beliefs in the spirits of ' things ' and the 
domestic worship which constituted the true and effective 
Eoman religion, before the influence of Greece was felt. 

The religion of the Eoman state, it has been said, was 
simply the religion of the domestic hearth writ large, for the 
state, too, had its common hearth where the Vestal Virgins 
guarded for ever the eternal fire which symbohsed at once 
the sacredness and the purity of the Eoman home. But 
while the goddess of the hearth, Vesta, held her central 
place of honour in the vaulted temple [supposed to have been 



312 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

built after the manner of the atrium of a house] between the 
Capitoline and Palatine hills, she was worshipped not merely 
as a public goddess, as among the Greeks, but at every pri- 
vate hearth. The common meals of the family were taken 
rovmd the hearth, and were a daily bond of family imion and 
a daily act of worship. The penates protected the going out 
and coming in of the members of the family, and to them at 
every meal libations were offered. 

The depth of family feeling among the Komans and the 
conservatism of their character are well illustrated by the 
practice of carrying masks of their progenitors to funerals, so 
that the head of a family might be said to be followed by 
his own ancestors to the last funeral rites. 

So closely was the Eoman life bound up with religion that 
we have found it impossible to speak of the one without 
the other. The Eoman state ultimately rests on Jupiter as 
law and order and object of supreme reverence, on Mars as 
the arm strong for defence and offence, and on Vesta as sym- 
bolising the sacredness and purity of the home. ^ 

Civil Relations. — What now was the Eoman in his 
civil relations, as distinguished from the religious and the 
social ? 

In the original constitution of Eome the burgesses, or free- 
men, constituted the state. The elders of the three hundred 
clans forming the community were the senate, and co-ordi- 
nate with the king. The various members of the family, 
however distantly related, constituted the gens or clan. The 
senators who represented the clans — to the number of three 
hundred — were the king's council, but the ultimate appeal 
was to the whole body of burgesses or patricii. We see from 
this that, from the first, the Eoman led a public and pohtical 
life. The expulsion of the kings and the transference of 
power to the consuls and senate (509 B.C.) gave to the 

1 The practical disruption of the Roman religion under Hellenic influences 
before the end of the Republic, I do not enter into. Spite of all the changes and 
the influx of many gods, the old Roman idea seems to me to have survived far 
into imperial times. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 313 

world the most powerful aristocratic republic the world has 
ever seen. The burgesses alone had originally the duty of 
bearing arms, which thus was a privilege. These were the 
patrcs, and they and their families were called patricians in 
opposition to the plcbs — those inhabitants of Eome who had 
gathered there after the original settlement. It would be 
out of place here to dwell on the history of Eoman civil life, 
or to speak of the struggles between patricians and plebeians. 
Even in these struggles a common patriotism was never for- 
gotten. Enough is done for our purposes here if I point out 
the leading characteristics of life of the Eoman generally. 
It is thus that we get a key to his conceptions of education. 

One great event in the development of Eoman civil life 
must, however, be named — the appointment of decemviri to 
draw up a code of law. This code (the Twelve Tables), ap- 
proved by the senate and sanctioned by the assemblies of the 
people, was doubtless largely based on the customary law 
which had arisen in the preceding centuries. It was more in 
the interests of the masses of the people than of the aristo- 
cratic senate that there should be a code to which all might 
appeal. The object was the ' equalising of liberty,' for Law, 
as opposed to the arbitrary decisions of individuals however 
wise, is liberty. These laws (' fountain of public and j^rivate 
law,' as Livy says) constituted the basis of the great Eoman 
jurisprudence, and in respect of language were concise, lucid, 
simple, and in all respects admirable. They were cut on 
bronze tablets and put up in a public place. The date of 
their publication was 450 B.C., and we may regard tliis as the 
second founding of the Eoman state. The idea of law and 
the supremacy of law did not then for the first time enter 
the Eoman mind, but its existence was signalised and con- 
firmed by a public act which was not only the guarantee of 
Eoman liberty but an important factor in the history of 
European civilisation. 

Let us now sum up this brief survey. What have we 
found ? A people with deep religious instincts which lead 



314 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

US to expect that religious instruction and sentiment will 
find a prominent place in the education of children; an 
almost sacred family life, with an autocratic father, but 
happily also with a true house-mother at its head ; a free 
and intensely political public life — a life in the forum — at 
once cause and effect of a strong sense of that community of 
the social organism which is at the root of all true patriotism ; 
an unquestioned recognition of the supremacy of law, and in 
connection with all this a military life reserved as an hon- 
ourable function for the true citizen. In Rome the executive 
authority of the magistrate, whether king, consul, dictator, or 
emperor, was never questioned, any more than the authority 
of the council of elders. To the interests of the state as a 
whole every individual was prepared to sacrifice himself. 
This did not weaken the family idea. On the contrary, it 
was the chief glory of the leadmg families to have served the 
state nobly. * Life in the case of the Roman,' says Mommsen 
(ii. 4, 8), 'was spent under conditions of austere restraint, 
and the nobler he was the less was he a free man. All-pow- 
erful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought and 
action ; and to have led a serious and strict life, or, to use a 
Latin expression, a grave and severe life, was his glory. 
Nothing more or less was expected of him tlian that he 
should keep his household in good order, and unflinchingly 
bear his part of counsel and action in public affairs. But 
while the individual had neither the wish nor the power to 
be aught else than a member of the community, the glory 
and the might of that community were felt by every indi- 
vidual burgess as a personal possession to be transmitted 
along with his name and his homestead to posterity; and 
thus, as one generation after another was laid in the tomb 
and each in succession added its fresh contribution tn the 
stock of ancient honours, the collective sense of dignity in 
the noble families of Rome swelled into that mighty pride 
of Roman citizenship to which the earth has never, perhaps, 
witnessed a parallel, and the traces of which — strange as 
they are grand — seem to us whenever we meet them to 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 315 

belong, as it were, to another world. It was one of the char- 
acteristic peculiarities of this mighty pride of citizenship 
that, while not suppressed, it was yet compelled by the rigid 
simplicity and equality that prevailed among the citizens to 
remain locked up within the breast during life, and was only 
allowed to find expression after death ; but it was displayed 
in the funeral of the man of distinction so intensely and con- 
spicuously that this ceremonial is better fitted than any other 
phenomenon of Eoman life to give us who live in other times 
a glimpse of the wonderful spirit of the Eomans.' 

But the civic and civil life of the Eomans dould not have 
sustained itself, even with the help of that respect for ances- 
try which included a veneration for the forms as well as the 
life of the past, and for Jupiter as Head of the State, had it 
not been for the instinctive recognition of law as the basis of 
true liberty which made Eome an ever-extending and long- 
enduring power. ' The Eomans were distinguished,' says 
Ihne (iv. 7), ' from all other nations not only by the extreme 
earnestness and precision with which they conceived their 
law and worked out the consequences of its fundamental 
principles, but by the good sense which made them submit 
to the law, once established, as an absolute necessity of 
political health and strength. It was this severity in 
thinking and acting which, more than any other causes, made 
Eome great and powerful. . . . The divine law, the elder 
sister of the civil law, was the pattern on which the latter 
was moulded. Both were characterised by the same severity, 
systematic order, deference to fixed formulas, and fear of 
change.' 

The Personal Character of the Roman. — The char- 
acter of the Eoman is sufficiently indicated in what we have 
already said ; but a few more words seem necessary, inas- 
much as the tradition of character, no less than that of 
civic life and duty, was the main source of the education 
of successive generations for the first 350 years of the city's 
Hfe. 

In the Eoman a personaKty more intense than the Hellertic 



316 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

is visible. He exists, doubtless, for the state; but in this 
sense, that the state exists in and through him. From the 
first a certain self-sufficing Stoic dignity characterises him. 
Roman personality asserts itself as always subordmate to the 
state, yet governed by the thought that the state exists 
through and by virtue of the individual and of the family 
which the father represents. The state needs the mdividual, 
and each citizen proudly bears the burden of the civil hfe. 
The feehngs of personality, of a regulative will, and of obli- 
gation to law and duty, are closely interwoven in theix roots 
in human nature ; and where they exist we should expect to 
find those complex virtues flourish into which personality, 
will, and a sense of law most largely enter. These virtues 
are integrity, courage, resolution, persistence, fidehty, and 
justice, in the sense of law ; and the very naming of these 
ethical characteristics recalls to our minds the ancient 
Eoman of tradition, the founder of an empire. With such a 
people you expect to find great administrative ability. They 
are born to govern, and to conquer that they may govern. 
Their persistency, nay, pertinacity, explains itself. Mark the 
saying of the proud and overbearing Eoman: 'Eome must 
never conclude a peace, save as victor ; ' an issue of war only 
attainable by inflexible hardness, and more, alas, of the exter- 
nal show than the reality of justice to enemies and rebels. 
With such a people you expect to find a power of subduing 
nature as well as men to their imperious and imperial will. 
Their roads, their bridges, their aqueducts, their public build- 
ings, all testify to this. 

As the people, par eminence, of practical reason, the rela- 
tions of men as holders of property, which represents to the 
eye of sense our personalities, are always vividly present to 
them, and we are not surprised to find a keen perception of 
relative rights, of practical justice as between members of the 
same state at least, and subsequently as between nations, and 
the consequent creation of a sound jurisprudence which, with 
the extension of the empire, becomes vast and imposing, and 
from being civic and national becomes imperial and cosmo- 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 317 

politan. To the remark that Greece conquered took Eome 
captive by its arts, may be aptly opposed this, that Eome 
fallen took its victors captive by its law, and still, indeed, 
holds them bound. 

The beautiful, however — art and the softer and gentler 
emotions — are as incompatible with the Eoman nature as a 
joyous delight in life for mere life's sake, and in nature for 
nature's sake. These things are to be met with, but they are 
not indigenous : even these Eome must conquer and lay its 
warlike hands upon and affect to enjoy. In the moral sphere 
the Eoman virtus has to be contrasted with the KoXoKo.'yaOla 
of the Greek. 

With all their great qualities, and in perfect consistency 
with them, it is yet true, as Ihne says (i. 120), ' they were a 
cold, calculating, selfish people, without enthusiasm or the 
power of awakening enthusiasm, distinguished by self-control 
and an iron will rather than by the graces of character. They 
were proud, overbearing, cruel, and rapacious.' 

I may fitly conclude the preceding survey of Eoman 
characteristics in the well-known lines of Vergil (' ^neid,' 
vi. 847) : 

Others, I ween, with happier grace 

From bronze or stone shall call the face, 

Plead doubtful causes, map the skies, 

And tell when planets set or rise. 

But ye, my Romans, still control 

The nations far and wide ; 

Be this your genius — to impose 

The rule of Heaven on vanquished foes, 

Show pity to the humbled soul, 

And crush the sons of pride. ^ 

Conington^s translation. 

* ExcTident alii spiranti<a mollius ?era, 
Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus, 
Orabunt caussas melius, caeliqiie meatus 
Describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent : 
Tu regere imperio populos, Eomane, memento ; 
Hfe tibi erunt artes ; pacisque impoiiere morem 
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. 



318 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Wealth and the lust and luxury of power ultimately de- 
stroyed the distinctively Koman character, although round it 
there still hovered an imperial magnificence. No nation has 
yet been found which has been able to resist the insidious 
inroads of abounding wealth — especially when that is con- 
centrated (as seems to be inevitable), in the hands of a small 
minority of the citizens. There arises a rivalry in self- 
indulgence and ostentation among the few and a deep-seated 
discontent among the many. The latter are indifferent to 
the maintenance of the commonwealth ; the former are pre- 
occupied with personal aims and ambitions. In presence of 
the appetite for self -aggrandisement, civic virtues and public 
spirit gradually disappear, and the nation is doomed, for it 
has lost the moral energy that made it. Where each seeks 
his own things and not also those of another, the community 
of feeling which constitutes a commonwealth is gone. There 
exists a veiled internecine war which must make the State 
an easy prey to external foes, unless it be saved by an inter- 
nal revolution. We may, in the passing fashion of the hour, 
talk of a state being an organism, but, after all, it is a mass 
of individuals ; and it is only by the education of these in- 
dividuals and the maintenance of the sanctity of the individ- 
ual family that we can hope permanently to sustain public 
virtue and uphold an empire. Take care of individuals 
and the family, and the (so-called) ' organism ' will take care 
of itself. 



CHAPTEK II 

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EOMAN EDUCATION 

What means now did the Eoman take for maintaining his 
greatness by educating those who were to bear the burden of 
the state after their fathers had passed away ? 

I shall first answer the question very generally in the 
words of Cicero, who says : ' Among the Greeks some devote 
themselves with their whole soul to the poets, others to 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 319 

geometers, others to musicians, others again, like the Dialec- 
ticians, open up to themselves a new sphere of activity and 
devote their whole time and life to the arts which mould the 
mind of youth to humanity and virtue. The children of the 
Eomans, on the other hand, are brought up that they may 
one day be able to be of service to the fatherland, and one 
must accordingly instruct them in the customs of the state 
and in the institutions of their ancestors. The fatherland 
has produced and brought us up that we may devote to its 
use the finest capacities of our mind, talent, and understand- 
ing. Therefore we must learn those arts whereby we may 
be of greatest service to the state, for that I hold to be the 
highest wisdom and virtue.' The humanities and learning, 
art and the beautiful, these were not the motive forces of 
Eoman education as they had been among the Greeks, but 
rather those arts which might be of political service. Har- 
monious development, culture — either of mind or body — 
for its own sake was an idea alien to the Eoman mind. It 
was only when the seeds of decay had been already sown 
that Hellenic aims and Hellenic culture found a place ; and 
then only partially. The practical Eoman life was essentially 
opposed to the Greek iPsthetic life. 

It is necessary to speak of the education of Eome in suc- 
cessive periods. 

First National Period — to 303 B.C. 

In his home, in the forum, and in military exercises, the 
Eoman boy for the first four or five centuries of the Eepublic 
found his education, and any account of this must necessarily 
be a mere repetition of what has been already written on the 
religious, social, and civil life of Eome. Such reading and 
writing as were necessary for affairs were in some instances 
acquired from adventure teachers during this period, but it 
would appear that they were chiefly acquired in the home. 
The education of the Eoman boy was simply the education 
which home-life, citizenship, and the observance of ancestral 
traditioi4 gave him. As the fathers and mothers, so the 



320 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

SOUS and daughters. Gravitas, lioncstas, fortitudo, prudentia, 
justitia — these were the words which summed up the vir 
honus and to these the young Eoman was trained. 

In the Home. — The laws of the Twelve Tables (confirm- 
ing previous usage) required that a misformed infant should 
be killed, but the father could decide this question only with 
the help of a council of his nearest male relatives. There 
was, however, no law against the exposure of infants, and 
this was practised under the general rights which the father 
had; but it would not appear to have been so much the 
usage as among the Greeks. In later times, infants whom it 
was desired to get rid of were often placed before the Temple 
of Pietas — which thus might be regarded as a kind of creche 
for foundlings. In 374 a.d. exposure was prohibited by law 
(Cod. Justin, viii. 52, 2) ; but the law was ineffectual. 
Ussing points out that Hierocles in the fifth century com- 
plains of the continuance of the practice. 

Mothers suckled their own children until about the time 
that Greek customs began to penetrate Eoman society. Wet- 
nurses (almost always slaves, often Greeks) were then 
employed. On the ninth day after his birth the boy, and on 
the eighth the girl (Krause, p. 236), received their names 
{dies lustricus) ; this was also the ' naming ' day (dies nomi- 
num'), and there was a family feast and dancing. The 
religious ceremonial, the naming, and the festival, were all 
at the same time. The child was thereafter registered. A 
box or ball, with an amulet enclosed, was hung round the 
child's neck to preserve it from magical arts and the evil eye. 
This huUa was of gold in the case of children of the higher 
ranks. 

The children had their games, to a large extent of the 
same kind as those common among the Greeks. The amuse- 
ments of the boys, however, seem to have been chiefly games 
of various kinds with the ball. 

His mother, and afterwards his father, trained the Roman 
boy and not a slave-pedagogue, and, even when a pedagogue 
was employed, the maternal supervision was not intermitted, 



THE ARYAN OF INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 321 

during all the earlier centuries at least ; and, in the best 
houses, not till towards the end of the Eepublic. 

The child, let us remember, was under the influence of a 
mother who was assigned her true place at the head of the 
household. The severe discipline and magisterial authority 
of the father were supplemented by the milder moral influ- 
ence of the mother, while the reverence shown to the house- 
hold gods in the various ordinary acts of daily life tended to 
evoke that feeling of veneration and religiosity which was 
characteristic of the Eoman. 

The boy exchanged the toga prcetexta for the toga virilis 
about the sixteenth year, when his name was formally con- 
firmed. He entered thus early on the responsibilities of man- 
hood. This change was made with great ceremony, both 
domestic and public, and accompanied (like other Eoman 
acts) by domestic religious rites, temple sacrifices, and a 
family festival. The youth's name was now enrolled among 
the citizens. The education thenceforth was the education 
of public life, including military exercises ; but the home 
education and influence never ceased. 

On festival and religious occasions, and in solemn banquets, 
the youth was accustomed in the earlier centuries to assist 
in chanting the national songs, and may be said thereby to 
have acquired the elements of poetry and music ; but they 
were the barest elements. Later in the history of the Eepub- 
lic, the singing and chanting seem to have been performed 
by a specially hired class. Music was not, as among the 
Greeks, a domestic institution and an alleviator of daily life. 
Nor was the purely practical direction of the Eoman training 
counteracted by their religion as it might have been ; for 
this too, as we have seen, was narrow, always closely con- 
nected with the hourly needs of the individual, the family, 
and the state. Being the growth of the abstract understand- 
ing, it did not yield materials for the poetic imagination and 
the free growth of ideal aims. Youths, after assuming the 
toga virilis, were a great deal in the company of their fathers 
in the street and forum, and learned in this way the duties 

21 



322 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

of a man and a citizen ; ' virtutis enim,' says Cicero (' De Off.* 
i. 6), 'laus omnis in actione consistit.' 

The chief education, in brief, which the Eoman boy 
received was the moral and rehgious training of home, and 
free intercourse with his father and mother. The rehgion of 
the hearth, as I have said, was the centre-point of the rehgion 
of the Eoman, and the education was the education of the 
hearth. In religion a high standard of observance was main- 
tained. Pietas, the ethical basis of the family, extended to 
the gens, and thus a reflected influence on home training was 
felt. We see here in operation that family education which 
Plutarch,! writing 100 years after the birth of Christ, 
strongly advocates for all, up to the age at which they are fit 
to attend the higher schools. What Sj)arta aimed at giving 
through its public system, and compulsorily, the Eoman 
aimed at giving through the parents, and freely : that is to 
say, he was content with this, because we cannot say that 
there was any conscious aim. The result was that the 
Eoman had a more genuine and personal rnoraUty than 
the Spartan. 

Thus during the first centuries of Eoman life down to 
about 303 B.C. the education was domestic, civic, and military. 
In its domestic relations it was profoundly religious. The 
sense of duty to moral law, to paternal authority, and to 
the state, was ever present to the child and the boy. There 
was no element of joy or love in the moral, any more than in 
the religious, life. There was, however, a deep sense of 
spiritual powers external to man which might be pleased or 
displeased by right or wrong conduct in every act of daily 
life, and this constituted that ' conscience ' of which the old 
Eoman religion was a formal and habitual recognition.^ 

The literary education of the boys must have been wholly 
confined, during the period of which we are speaking, to 
religious hymns and national songs — those early lays of 
which Cicero mourns the loss, and to which I have adverted 

1 Authorship of the essay in Plutarch's works doubtful. 
^ Pater's Marms the Epicurean. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 323 

above. Schools are indeed mentioned in which the simple 
arts of reading and writing were acquired. The daughter of 
Virginius is represented as frequenting one of these, 305 B.C. 
(Livy, iii. 44}, ' Virgini venienti in forum — ihi namquc in 
tahernis liUrarum ludi erant — minister decemviri libidinis 
manum injecit.' Tabemcv were a kind of booths open to the 
street. Nor is there any reason to doubt that many such 
schools existed. In the time of Camillus we find mention of 
a teacher of boys at Falerii (for the liberi princiimm, Livy, v. 
27) ^ ; and this confirms our conclusion that there was a con- 
siderable number of adventure elementary schools {ludi) prior 
to 303 B.C. at Eome, as well as among Sabiues and Etruscans. 
They were generally taught by slaves or freedmen. 

But, as we might expect from the domestic character of 
Eoman training, it is probable that when reading and writing 
were taught, they were taught in the family and by the 
father. This is the only explanation of the wide diffusion of 
these elementary arts. In any case, whether by domestic 
teaching or otherwise, reading and writing, so far as required 
for purposes of utility, were, at least from the fourth century 
B.C., widely known among certain classes of Eoman citizens 
— probably as widely known as they were in civilised Europe 
in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Livy says that 
Eoman boys used to be instructed in Etruscan literature just 
as in his time they were instructed in Greek (?). 

The young men practised gymnastic exercises, but solely 
with a view to military fitness, in the Campus Martins. Sing- 
ing, music, and dancing were all alien to the Eoman and, 
indeed, despised by him. 

Second National Period. — 303 B.C. to 148 B.C. (Death 
of Cato). 

Till about 250 B.C. Eoman education remained sul- 
stantially the same as in the preceding centuries. But 
during the preceding fifty years a certain development had 

1 Schola does not occur in the sense of a school till the later imperial times. 
The word for a school was Indus or ludus literarius. 



324 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

taken place. Two historical facts we must take as our guide. 
First of all, in 260 B.C., Plutarch tells us that Spurius Car- 
vilius, a freedman who had been domestic tutor to the Consul 
Carvilius, opened a school and was the first to take fixed fees 
for his instruction. This school Plutarch calls a ypafj-fiaro- 
SchaaKaXelov. Was he a primary teacher — a grammatist 
{liter ator), or was he a secondary teacher — a grammaticus ? 
Without entering into the discussion of this question, I 
would simply point to the second important historical fact. 
Prior to the date of Carvilius's school there could be no 
literary instruction, because there was no literature. It is 
about this date that we have a sudden development of a 
national literature, by the help of Italo-Greeks chiefly. Cn. 
IsT^evius of Campania was born 273 B.C., and wrote a histori- 
cal poem on the first Punic War (probably about 240 B.C.), 
twenty years after Carvilius opened his school. He also 
wrote dramas and epigrams based on Greek literature. Then 
Livius Andronicus (a freedman from Tarentum), who died 
203 B.C., wrote a translation into Latin of the ' Odyssey ' — let 
us say also about 240 B.C. ; Quintus Ennius, et sapiens, et 
fortis} born 240 B.C. (also like Nffivius from Campania), laid 
the foundation of Eoman epic in his 'Annals,' let us say 
about 200 B.C.; Pacuvius (born 220 B.C.), a nephew of En- 
nius, wrote dramas full of Eoman national feeling, and he 
was followed by the great comedian Plautus. Are we to 
suppose that Neevius and Andronicus, without any literary 
precursors, all at once gave literary form to the Latin tongue 
about 240 B.C. ? Is it not more probable that when Carvilius 
opened his school in 260 B.C. and taught a reformed alphabet 
and spelling, Latin had taken shape, and that not only tra- 
ditionary fables were instruments of education but also con- 
temporary Latinity in the form of public records, not to speak 
of the Twelve Tables, which were in good literary form ? ^ 

1 Horace, Ej). ii. 1, where see a list of early writers more or less characterised. 

2 Horace helps us here — 

' fcedera regum 
Vel Gabiis vel cum rigidis aequata Sabinis, 
Pontificum libros, anuosa volumina vatum,' &c. Ep. ii. i. 24. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 325 

Carvilius would thus carry his pupils, doubtless a select few, 
further in the study of Latin than was possible for the ordi- 
nary primary schoolmaster. Accordingly, he was a gram- 
maticus. Indeed, if this had not been the case, not only in 
the school of Carvilius but in other schools, for whom did 
jSTffivius and Andronicus write ? They must have had an 
audience. We know, also, that the rude Atellan Fables had 
before this given place to the higher dramatic form of the 
Satura. 

It appears to me that we must conclude that in 260 B.C. 
and onwards there was gradually growing up in the ordinary 
ludi a higher linguistic education than had yet been known. 
Acquaintance with Greek had been common, though not 
general, before this date, for we know that Postumius, am- 
bassador to Tarentum so early as 282 B.C., addressed an 
assembly there in the Greek tongue. The frivolous audience 
laughed at his blunders it is true, but it was no common feat 
to address a formal oration to Greeks in their own tongue. 
The increasing intercourse with Magna Grsecia and Sicily, 
and with the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean generally, 
had, in fact, made Greek familiar as the language both of 
commerce and diplomacy, and given it an early footing in 
Eome. Greek slaves and freedmen were employed to teach 
the language conversationally to the children of the wealthier 
citizens, and to act as secretaries. Along with conversational 
Greek, the Eoman youth now also had the laws of the Twelve 
Tables for a text-book, and these as a chant (^carmen neces- 
sariuiri) had to be learnt by heart. So the Spartan and 
Cretan boys, it will be remembered, said or chanted their 
laws. Eeading and writing were more widely diffused than 
in previous generations, and ludi had increased in number. 
Traditionary songs in praise of heroes also were learnt by 
heart and chanted, declamation and modulation of tone 
always receiving great attention. 

Education in the true sense, however, was not in the 
hands of the school-teacher, but was mainly domestic as 
in the previous centuries. It depended on the character 



326 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

of the father and mother, and the spirit that animated 
public life. Conservative tradition governed it. It has 
been weU remarked that the less imagination a people 
has the more is it governed by tradition ; and tradition 
governed the unimaginative Roman. The boys were 
brought up in the disciplina vetus, the manners and cus- 
toms of ancestors being held in reverence. Moribus anti- 
quis stat res Bomana virisque (Ennius in Cic. 'De Rep.' 5). 
There was no suggestion of a state system as in Sparta 
whereby to mould the youth into citizens of a certain type, 
and yet severity and dignity of life were maintained; but 
this wholly through the family and by the power of trans- 
mitted custom. This would not have been possible with- 
out the existence of a hereditary aristocracy protecting itself 
by marriage laws from admixture with plebeians. A native 
literature did not exist, except in the form of heroic songs 
and pubhc records, rude fables, and satires cast in a rough 
dramatic form. 

It was now that the Italo-Greek Livius Andronicus, above 
referred to, endeavoured to supply the want of a literature 
by translating the ' Odyssey ' into Latin. He also repro- 
duced Greek dramas in the Latin tongue. The ' Odyssey ' 
thereupon became a text-book and was studied, and large 
portions of it learnt by heart, by the Roman youth. This 
change, which was m point of fact the beginning of true 
literary education among the Romans, began about 233 B.C. 
— Livius Andronicus died before 213 B.C. The school of 
Carvilius, already referred to, dates from about 260 B.C. 
Mommsen says (iii. 463), ' The place of the Twelve Tables 
was taken by the Latin Odyssey ' (not for some time after 
this, according to Cicero), ' as a sort of improved primer, and 
the Roman boy was . . . trained to the knowledge and 
delivery of his mother-tongue by means of this translation, 
as the Greek by means of the original ; noted teachers of 
the Greek language and literature, Andronicus and others, 
who already probably taught, not children properly so called, 
but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 327 

disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with 
the Greek.' These were the first steps towards a higher 
Latin instruction, but they did not yet, properly speaking, 
constitute such an instruction in any large sense. Instruc- 
tion in a language cannot manifestly go beyond the elemen- 
tary stage so long as the language wants a literature. ' Up 
till that time' (233 B.C.), says Suetonius ('De Gramm.' i.) 
'literature, far from being held in honour, was not even 
known : in fact, the city, rude and absorbed in war, did 
not yet give much attention to the liberal arts.' 

The Latin Odyssey was not only the beginning of Eoman 
literary education but continued to be taught into post- 
republican times. Horace learned it in the school of 
Orbilius, and Quintilian favours it. 

Literature in education, and with it Hellenism, made 
steady progress during the whole of the next century, and 
its dominance in the schools may be fixed at the date of 
the death of Cato the elder, who had laboured to stem its 
progress (148 B.C.). At this date, too, Macedonia became 
a Eoman province, and the Second Punic War and the 
supremacy of the Eomans in Spain were already past 
history. 

That the literary education of the young Eomans had 
made remarkable progress during the century that followed 
the opening of Carvilius's school, is apparent (apart from 
other ample evidence ^) from the reception of the Athenian 
ambassadors, Carneades the Academic and Diogenes the 
Stoic, by the Eoman youth who flocked to hear them dis- 
course in 155 B.C. Already, as Plutarch tells us in his Life 
of Cato, oratory was much studied in Eome,^ and the ambi- 
tious among the young men were prepared to hear with open 
ears the philosophic teachings of the Greeks. Polybius, 
about 167 B.C., refers to the number of capable teachers who 
resided in Eome. In this year also (167 B.C.) Crates of 

1 For example, Scipio and other leading statesmen preferred to write in 
Greek. 

2 For a sketch of Roman oratory the student will read Cicero's ' Brutus.' 



328 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Mallos in Cilicia, a Stoic philosopher and a man of great 
learning, came to Eome as ambassador of King Attains. He 
fell into an open sewer and broke his leg (Suet, ii.), and was 
consequently compelled to remain in Eome for some time. 
' During the whole period of his embassy and convalescence,' 
says Suetonius, ' he gave frequent lectures, taking great pains 
to instruct his hearers, and he has left us an example worthy 
of imitation.' 

The date of the death of Cato (148 B.C.) completes the 
second period of Eoman life and education ; and a book 
which he wrote, ' De Liberis educandis,' seems to have illus- 
trated the genuine practical character of Eoman educational 
conceptions in their strictest sense. It doubtless was in- 
tended as a protest against Hellenic innovations. The Hel- 
lenic idea of culture had not yet indeed taken root, and the 
words in Cicero (' De Eepublica,' i. 20) were still applicable : 
— ' Quid esse igitur censes discendum nobis ? ' To which 
the answer is : — ' Eas artes quae efficiant ut usui civitati 
simus.' The book by Cato was intended to show what a vir 
bonus ought to be as orator, physician, husbandman, warrior, 
and jurist. So much science only was to be acquired as was 
necessary for practical purposes. Latin grammar was not 
included, and this shows that the learned had not yet done 
much for the grammatical study of the native tongue. 
Music and the mathematical and physical sciences were 
excluded. Cato used to say that ' Greek literature should be 
looked into, but not thoroughly studied.' There seems after 
this to have been a succession of books of a similar kind ; 
but in all these, knowledge — as such and for its own sake 
— was not advocated. Cato is spoken of by Quintilian as 
the first Eoman writer on pedagogy. 

During this second period, as in that which preceded it, it 
cannot be said that the masses of the people (and only a por- 
tion of them) received any instruction save the rudiments of 
reading and writing. Those intended for mercantile life 
continued to acquire these accomplishments, and they were 
much more widely diffused (as appeared from Cato's book) 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 329 

even among the slaves, than we can now well explain unless 
it be that these, for the most part, were Greeks or Syro- 
Greeks. Schools were still what we call ' adventure ' schools, 
and there is no evidence that the differentiation into grammar 
or secondary schools had yet taken place, although teachers 
here and there gave advanced or secondary instruction. 

On the whole we may say that advanced instruction was 
chiefly domestic and tutorial, and consequently restricted to 
the upper classes. Spite, however, of Hellenic influence, the 
mores, consuetudines et instituta majorum, which constituted 
the vetus disciplina, still animated education. The Eoman 
was essentially conservative. The word ' educare ' when 
contrasted with the Greek TratBeveLv is itself instructive. It 
means to train up a child in the way he should go — the 
way, viz., of his fathers ; whereas, the Greek word has in 
view all that concerns both the bodily and mental growth of 
the boy. Education, in this Greek sense, can hardly be said 
to have existed at the time of Gate's death. Polybius, in- 
deed, writing about this time, remarks on the neglect of 
education among the Romans, as compared with the attention 
paid to it among the Greeks. 

To sum up. We are justified in saying that literary educa- 
tion cannot be regarded as beginning in Eome till about 233 
B.C. After this date, there seems to have been rapid progress, 
owing to Greek influence. Note also that the Second Punic 
War ended in 202 B.C., and Eome had now breathing time. 
Her power was finally established, and she was on her way 
to empire. Macedon was conquered 168 B.C. The first 
library was erected at Eome in 167 B.C. Let us put all these 
facts together and we shall accept readily Mommsen's con- 
clusion that ' even in the time of Pictor and Cato Greek cul- 
ture was widely diffused at Eome, and there was also a native 
culture.' 

The rapid progress which education made in Eome is 
partly to be explained by the fact that a recognised scheme , 
of culture already existed in the Hellenic schools of Italy and 
the Mediterranean cities generally. 



330 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Third National Period. — 148 B.C. onwards (Corinth 
destroyed 146 B.C.). 

We now come to the third period of Eoman intellectual 
life and education. After 148 B.C. it could no longer be said 
to be specifically Eoman at all.^ It was Greek education as 
influenced and coloured by the Eoman character and aims. 
It embraced not only the Latin and Greek languages and 
literature, but music and geometry. After the conquest of 
Macedonia, twenty years before (167 B.C.), the intellectual 
traffic between Greece and Eome, already considerable, was 
greatly augmented, and, from this time forward, Greek lan- 
guage and literature were regarded as indispensable elements 
in the higher education. Less than fifty years after the 
death of the great conservative Eoman, Hellenism, already 
dominant in 148 B.C., was now triumphant. Cicero (born 
106 B.C.) tells us that at the beginning of his life the ancient 
education had been wholly overthrown. 

The extent to which the cycle of general culture had 
changed in the Eoman world during the course of a century, 
is shown by a comparison of the Encyclopaedia of Cato with 
the similar treatise of Varro, ' concerning school sciences.' ^ 
As constituent elements of professional culture there appeared 
in Cato the art of oratory, the sciences of agriculture, of law, 
o'f war, and of medicine ; in Varro, the ' most learned of the 
Eomans' (born 116 B.C.), there appeared grammar, logic or 
dialectics, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, 
medicine, and architecture. This scheme of knowledge rests 
on a wholly Hellenic conception. 

And yet we cannot say that secondary schools taught by 
grammatici existed earlier than 148 years B.C. Before that 
date, some of the ordinary ludi may have carried boys be- 
yond the limits of a primary education. In all countries we 
find this transition period. But we are not entitled to go 
behind the authority of Suetonius, who tells us that Crates 
introduced the study of grammar at Eome. I speak only of 

1 Lucilias, the satirist, was born in 1 47 B.C. 

2 So far as the contents of these books are now known. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 331 

schools : that advanced instruction was given by Greek 
tutors in families we know. Progress was now, however, very 
rapid. About 140 B.C. there were, according to Suetonius 
('De Gram.' iii.), more than twenty celebrated grammatici at 
Rome, all, it is presumed, teaching. 

The higher education also, wiiich was summed up by the 
one word Oratory, seems to have begun to flourish about the 
same time, taught by Greeks in Greek to those who could 
follow them. It was towards the middle of the seventh 
century (100 B.C.), that the eminent orators Marcus Antonius 
and Lucius Crassus flourished, and twenty or thirty years 
before them the Gracchi. These men must have begun their 
education as boys about the beginning of the third period. 
They could speak Greek and hold discussions in it. A 
decree of the senate (161 B.C.) directed against the rhetori- 
cians and philosophers had failed to arrest the higher educa- /~\ 
tion in its beginnings ; and the censorial edict against the [ f 
higher schools so late as 112 B.C. was a InUum fulmen. It \y \ 
was, however, the philosophy of the Greeks, and not their 
literature, that the more conservative among the Eomans 
most dreaded. There was also not a little distrust of the 
Greek character, and that not without reason. Greek art 
and artists followed close on the heels of Greek rhetoric. It 
was about this time also that the women of the higher classes 
began to participate in the Hellenistic education. 

What Cato foresaw had now come. It had been hastened 
doubtless by the number of Greek scholars who found their 
way to Rome after the fall of Corinth (146 B.C.) ; among 
these there were philosophical and rhetorical teachers of 
considerable pretensions. The decree of the senate and the 
edict of the censor above referred to, are so interesting in the 
history of education generally, that I shall quote fully what 
Suetonius (' De Rhet.' i.) says : 

' Rhetoric also, as well as grammar, was not introduced 
amongst us till a late period, and with still more difficulty, 
inasmuch as we find that, at times, the practice of it was 
even prohibited. In order to leave no doubt of this I will 



332 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

subjoin an ancient decree of the senate as well as an edict of 
the censors : " In the consulship of Caius Fannius Strabo and 
Marcus Valerius Messala/ the praetor Marcus Pomponius 
moved the senate that an act be passed respecting philoso- 
phers and rhetoricians. In this matter they have decreed as 
follows : ' It shall be lawful for M. Pomponius, the praitor, to 
take such measures and make such provisions as the good of 
the republic and the duty of his office require, that no philoso- 
phers or rhetoricians be suffered in Rome.' " After some 
interval, the censor Cnseus Domitius iEnobarbus and Lucius 
Licinius Crassus issued the following edict upon the same 
subject. " It is reported to us that certain persons have insti- 
tuted a new kind of discipline ; that our youth resort to their 
schools ; that they have assumed the title of Latin rhetori- 
cians ; and that young men waste their time there, whole days 
together. Our ancestors have ordained what instruction it 
is fitting their children should receive, and what schools they 
should attend. These novelties, contrary to the customs and 
instructions of our ancestors, we neither approve nor do they 
appear to us good. Wherefore it appears to be our duty that 
we should notify our judgment both to those who keep such 
schools and those who are in the practice of frequenting 
them, that they meet our disapprobation." However, by slow 
degrees, rhetoric manifested itself to be a useful and honour- 
able study, and many persons devoted themselves to it both 
as a means of defence and of acquiring reputation.' 

Many native Romans also now began to cultivate the 
scholastic field, and it became the fashion to study Naevius, 
Ennius, and Lucilius in the schools, and to comment on these 
authors critically. The education which had humanitas, or 
culture, in the Eoman sense, for its aim was thus finally 
established, let us say about 625 a.u.c. at latest, i. e. 128 B.C. 
The first formal instruction in Latin rhetoric and oratory hy 
a Roman was given (but not for pay) about 128 B.C., the 
year we have named. His name was Lucius ^lius Pra-con- 
inus of Lanuvium, commonly called ' The Penman' (Stilo), a 

1 This scnatus constdticmwas made 161 B.C. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 333 

distinguished Roman knight. But it is only as a purely 
Latin rhetor that we can call him i\\Q first, for Greek rhetori- 
cians taught long hefore this.^ 

Personal superintendence of the boys of the wealthier 
classes had been to a large extent and for some time before 
this handed over to pgedagogi — in imitation of the Greek 
custom. These were also called ' custodes ' and ' comites.' 
They, however, did not instruct the boys but simply acted 
as guardians and attendants. They were generally Greek 
or Syro-Greek slaves and freedmen, and were, for the most 
part, selected with great care. The object the parents had 
in view was not only a moral one, but conversational fluency 
in the Greek tongue. 

The line which the Hellenistic studies took in Home was 
grammatical and philological rather than aesthetic, and in 
the higher schools it was rhetorical. The more ambitious 
minds occupied themselves with philosophical questions, 
especially on the lines of the Academic and Stoic philos- 
ophies ; but even the study of philosophy always had in 
view the practical equipment of the orator, except in so far 
as it afforded material for intellectual fence. The young 
Roman had at all periods of history to prepare himself for 
speech in the forum or the senate. Oratory was not only 
a mark of culture, but also a weapon of offence and defence 
('regina rerum oratio,' says Pacuvius). Accordingly, even 
now when both Latin and Greek literature had become 
fairly established as part of the ordinary instruction, both 
in the grammatical and rhetorical schools, the acquisition of 
oratory still governed those studies which were primarily 
intended to cultivate the humanity of the pupil more 
Grcccorum. Thus true to its own instincts did Rome 
remain even when the narrow ancient life was beginning 
to disappear. It is true that the laws of the. Twelve Tables 

1 Qiiiutilian tell.'? u.s (ii. 4. 42) on the authority of Cicero, that the first 
eminent Latin rhetor who taught by the method of fictitious pleadings in the 
school was Plotius, towards the end of the life of Licinius Crassus and about 
the same time as the first school of Roman literature was opened by Nicanor 
Postumus (93 B.C.). 



334 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

were no longer used as a text-book, that the old domestic 
education was maintaining itself with difficulty, and that 
Latin and Greek literature now formed the basis of all edu- 
cation ; but the chief aim of the literary education was 
always oratory, not pure literature. The study of rhetoric, 
as constituting the highest education of youth, was regarded 
as not merely essential to the formation of a man, ' ingenuus 
et liberaliter educatus,' but above all as the road to influence, 
power, and public employment. 

We now see virtually established in the last period of 
the Republic, i.e. from 148 B.C., a regular course of instruc- 
tion having culture or humanitas for its object, but always 
in subservience to oratory for the uses of public life. The 
curriculum might be said to consist of three stages — the 
primary, in which reading and writing of Latin and Greek 
were taught ; then the grammatical and literary instruction 
of a higher and philological kind ; finally the technical and 
elaborate study of rhetoric and the art of forensic orations, 
along with such dialectic and philosophy as might be 
available. 

It was to the Hellenic victory over the old Eoman edu- 
cation that we owe Cicero, Vergil, Lucretius, and all that 
brilliant crowd of literary men who adorned the last century 
of the Republic and the beginnings of the empire. Cicero 
was born 106 B.C. ; Lucretius 98 B.C. ; Vergil 70 B.C. It was 
only now that Latin finally took its place side by side with 
Greek, if not as an equal, yet as an honourable rival. 

Csesar, and after him Augustus, encouraged and protected 
the professors of every art, and many now took to literature 
and philosophy as the occupation of men to whom, under an 
imperial system, the highest political activity was no longer 
open. While, therefore, we may regret with Cato, and at 
a later date Tacitus, the decay of the old Roman training, 
we must recognise the necessity of the Hellenic invasion if 
a larger conception of the ends of education and of life was 
ever to animate the Roman mind. The importance of this 
in the future history of the world is beyond our power of 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 335 

estimating, for it was under Eoman protection and under 
Imperial power that all the nobler arts of life were assured 
of recognition and encouragement in every corner of the 
civilised world. 

And yet it was impossible to turn a Eoman into a Greek. 
He remained to the last prosaic and practical. The Helleni- 
cised few to whom culture pure and simple was an aim, 
formed a kind of intellectual aristocracy. Even in the time 
of Augustus we find Horace fully recognising the difference 
between the Roman and the Greek mind, just as we find the 
same recognition in the passage we quoted from Cicero, In 
the ' Ep. ad Pisones,' line 325, Horace ^ contrasts the Greek 
genius with that of the practical Roman : 

'To the Greeks the Muse has given genius, to the Greeks, 
ambitious of notliing but praise, the power to speak with elo- 
quence. The boys of Rome learn by long calculations to divide a 
pound into a hundred parts. " Let Albinus' son tell me vfhat 
remains if from five ounces one is taken." If you have been able 
to answer " the third of a pound," well done ; you will be able to 
look after your own estate. Add an ounce, what is the sum? 
" Half a pound." When we have thus imbued their minds with 
the canker and care of gain, do we hope that they will compose 
poems worthy of preservation, worthy of being preserved in cases 
of cypress ? ' 

^ Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo 
Mnsa loqiii, prfeter laudem nuUius avaris. 
Romani pueri longis rationibus assem 
Discunt in partes centum diducere. Dicat 
Filius Albini : si de quincunce remota est 
Uncia, quid superat ? Poteras dixisse, Triens. Eu ! 
Rem poteris servare tuam. Redit uncia, quid fit ? 
Semis. At haec aninios aerugo et cura peculi 
Quum semel imbuerit, speramus carmina fingi 
Posse linenda cedro et levi servanda cupresso ? 



336 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 



CHAPTER III 

CURRICULUM OF STUDY — SCHOOLS, METHODS, AND 
MASTERS 

I SHALL now sum up briefly the course of instruction 
through which the Eoman youth were carried during the 
third or Romano-Hellenic period, as accurately as it can 
be ascertained. 

Primary Instruction 

Up to the sixth or seventh year the child remained at 
home under his mother and nurse, and under the protection 
of a, pcedagogtis. His elementary instruction then began either 
at home or in a hidus puhlictcs under a ludimagister (gram- 
matist, liter ator), where he learnt to read and write. Ludus 
was the word confined to primary schools ; schola, from the 
Greek, was applied to higher schools.^ Horace, in his first 
book of Satires, i. vi. 72, gives a picture of Italian boys going 
to school. His father, he says, ' was unwilling to send me 
to the ludus of Flavins, whither boys the offspring of great 
centurions were wont to go with their satchels ' (capsce calcu- 
lorum, says Orelli, i.e. bags for holding pebbles to count with) 
' and tablets, carrying their fee every Ides, but had the spirit 
to bring his boy to Rome to be taught.' ^ 

In learning their letters, the children first acquired their 
names and their sequence by heart without regard to their 

1 'Ludus' was a place for exercise of any kind, e.g. 'Indus militaris,' 
where soldiers were exercised. It thus was naturall)' used for the place to 
which children resorted for school exercises. ^xoX^ (leisure Avhich gave 
the Latin 'schola,' was originally used by the Greeks to designate a place for 
the occupation of leisure, and so gradually was applied to a place for 
philosophical discussions. 

2 ' Noluit in Flavi ludum me mittere magni 

Quo pueri magnis e centurionibus orti, 

Lfevo suspensi loculos tabulamque lacerto, 

Ibant octonis referentes Idibus aera ; 

Sed puerum est ausus Eomam portare docendum,' &c. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 337 

form and function, a practice of which Quintilian complains. 
Writing was begun at the same time with reading, either by 
copying models or by tracing letters inscribed on waxen 
tablets or graven in wood — the teacher at first guiding the 
hand. 

The details of the work done in a Konian primary school 
are not, so far as I can learn, accurately known. Simple 
reading and writing and very elementary calculation were 
taught, the last with the free help of the fingers and little 
stones and thereafter on waxen tablets. I think we can also 
say for certain that (as in the Greek schools) attention was 
paid to accentuation and elocution, and that the substance of 
what was read was always explained. Gnomic verses con- 
taining maxims and precepts were taken down and com- 
mitted to memory. The reading-book was generally the 
Latin version of the ' Odyssey.' Up to about 80 B.C., the 
laws of the Twelve Tables were learnt by lieart.^ 



Secondary Instruction 

About the age of twelve the boy passed into the school of 
the grammaticus — to whom the epithets ' doctus ' and 
' eruditus ' were usually applied. 

There were two classes of grammatical schools — the Greek 
and the Latin. It was the general custom to go to the 
former first. This custom was approved of by Quintilian. 
The pupil, when he entered, usually took with him a certain 
conversational knowledge of Greek. He was instructed in 
grammar in the narrower sense, learned portions of Homer 
and other poets by heart, and was introduced to the critical 
study of literature and to composition. The fables of iEsop 
were popular in the earlier stages of instruction. To reading 

1 After all that has been written on Roman education, the precise details 
of work in the primary schools are by no means certain. Doubtless it varied 
as it has done in our own country and depended on the qualifications of the 
teacher — at least before the grammatical or secondary schools were fully 
differentiated. 

22 



338 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

with purity of diction and good expression much importance 
was now attached. 

Dictation was largely practised with a view to correct 
spelling, and also because, by means of dictation, select poems 
could be written down and learnt by heart when the com- 
plete works of the poets could not be had. Even when rolls 
became cheap, this practice of dictation was kept up. The 
rhetorician even dictated his system of rhetoric. 

The Twelve Tables ceased to be learned by heart in the 
lifetime of Cicero.^ Music was taught with a view chiefly 
to rhythm — for music as an art was not cultivated at Rome. 
The employments of leisure were not esteemed there — the 
Eoman was too serious and practical for this. The musi- 
cians employed at religious festivals were paid servants. 

As to writing, it seems to me doubtful whether in the pri- 
mary school the pupil advanced beyond writing with the 
sharp-pointed stylus on waxen tablets ; but in the secondary 
schools they also learned to write on parchment or papyrus 
with pen {calamus) and ink (a tr amentum). In these schools, 
however, and even in the schools of the rhetoricians, the 
waxen tablet was constantly in use. "With the flat head of 
the style words could be deleted and corrections made. 

Grammatical instruction meant in Eome ordinary gram- 
mar as we now understand it, to which all the philology of 
the time was made contributory ; also literature with the ex- 
planation of the poets, and criticism. The full explanation 
of the poets was also the recognised medium for giving gen- 
eral information. Thus, outside the literary text-books, the 
instruction which the Roman boy received was orally com- 
municated. He was dependent on his master. 

The Greek and Latin grammar schools were distinct. As 
a rule, I have said, the boy went first to the Greek school. 
Greek was, in fact, the leading study of the secondary 
schools, and was acquired as if it were a native tongue. 
The advanced pupils spoke and wrote Greek. But from 

1 Cic. De Leg. ii. 23: 'Discebamus enim piieri XII. ut carmen neces- 
sarium, quas jam nemo discit.' 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 339 

about 90 B.C., if not sooner, Latin rhetoric, i.e. the adapta- 
tion of Greek rhetoric to the Latin language and oratory, 
began also to be taught. By that time there was a Latin 
literature and not a few orators, and the language liad been 
moulded into the concise, vigorous, and effective organ of 
speech which has come down to modern Europe. At the 
same time it was not unusual for the advanced pupils to 
declaim in Greek as well as in Latin. If they had not 
done so, they could not have benefited by the criticism 
of their Greek teachers who, for the most part, despised 
Latin. 

Geography was taught, as appears from a line of Pro- 
pertius (iv. iii. 36), ' Cogor et e tabula pictos cognoscere 
niundos.' 

To the course of instruction in the grammar schools we 
have to add music, with a view to the understanding of 
metre ; not the playing on an instrument, as in Greece. The 
simple singing or chanting which had been associated with 
Eoman religion and celebration of heroes, was learned from 
special teachers by a few, but only with a view to proper in- 
tonation and rhythm in oratory. By the Eoman the horn 
and the trumpet were preferred to the lyre and cithara which 
charmed the Greek. 

Arithmetic was taught ; but neither in the secondary or 
higher education was it the theoretical arithmetic of Plato, 
but mere calculation. 

Geometry was taught by a specialist, but chiefly in its 
practical relations to mensuration. As a liberal study it had 
for the Ptomans no attraction. So with astronomy. 

Dancing was taught, but only privately in the homes of 
the pupils. It partook very much of the nature of instruc- 
tion in calisthenics and ' deportment,' and was wholly unlike 
our modern dancing. The possibility of young men and 
women waltzing together at a public assembly would have 
been to the Eoman shocking, had it not been inconceivable. 
Indeed, Cicero says in one of his orations, that no one would 
dance unless he were either drunk or mad. 



340 PRE-CBRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Gymnastic had a purely hygienic and military aim, and 
only those who had assumed the toga virilis frequented the 
Campus Martins. It was with dithculty the Eoman ever 
understood it in the Hellenic sense of a free discipline. The 
gymnastic of the Romans had, it is true, towards the end of 
the Republic, borrowed a good deal from the Greeks ; but the 
Campus Martins was never a Greek gymnasium, but essen- 
tially a military exercising ground. 

The literati or grammatici in the later years of the school 
curriculum frequently encroached on the work which 
properly belonged to the rhetoricians, and gave exercises in 
declamation and disputation, great attention being paid at 
this stage, and, indeed, at all stages of school-teaching, to 
pleasing elocution. 

In the Roman school of the grammaticus we see only a 
repetition of the Hellenic school after it was fully developed 
(let us say in the third century B.C.). The differentiation 
into primary and secondary schools had now taken place 
everywhere. It is this developed Hellenic school that is 
known as the Romano-Hellenic, and it was to be found in all 
the important towns of the Roman Empire down to the fifth 
century a.d. But in all things — even in the study of 
Greek — there was a Roman practical aim, while in all sub- 
jects, save literature and what bore directly on the full 
understanding of the poets, the Roman was superficial 
and utilitarian. Might we not say, superficial because 
utilitarian ? 

The further education of the youth after he had assumed 
the toga virilis (generally at sixteen years of age) depended 
on his future occupation. Those intended for a farmer's life 
went to live at some farm station ; those intended for the 
army passed very young into the service ; those again who 
were intended for public life or for pleaders and jurists, went 
to the rhetorical schools and thereafter attended the forum, 
the comitia, and the senate, attaching themselves to some 
approved orator or jurist. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 341 

Tlie Higher Instruction — Oratory 

\ 

In the rhetorical schools the young men studied rhetoric 
and all the arts which co ild make an effective orator. Cicero 
('De Orat.' iv.) tells us that in the last centui*y of the 
Eepubhc ' no studies were ever pursued with more earnest- 
ness than those tending to the acquisition of elotfience.' 
These studies, as being lii'guistic and literary in the y/idest 
sense, gave a large and Lberal cultivation, notwithstanding 
the practical aim. It was held that to be a ' true orator ' a 
man must study philosophy, mathematics, and, in fact, 
famiharise himself with the whole encyclopaedia. In the 
schools the youths wrote declamations on prescribed themes 
(theses or loci communes') and delivered them with proper 
accent and articulation. They conducted also fictitious cases, 
taking sides in the dispute. The analysis of language with 
a view to mastering all its forms was studied (see Cicero ' De 
Oratore ' and Quintilian). Mathematics, philosophy (at least 
towards the end of the Eepublic) and law, as well as litera- 
ture, entered more or less into this higher curriculum ; but 
the three former seem to have been studied under specialist 
teachers, and did not form an essential part of the higher 
instruction with the majority of students. It was only in 
the closing period of the Eepublic that native history began 
to receive attention. In short, we may say that in the higher 
education of youths who aimed at some form of public life — 
as all the ambitious among the well-to-do did — -the two 
words ' law ' and ' oratory ' practically summed up their 
studies. Philosophy and geometry, which, along with astron- 
omy, included in those days the whole of physical science, 
were merely touched, save by a few of the more ardent, 
a political constitution in which a senate or a popular a 
ence had to be convinced, oratory was the great instrur 
of the rising politician ; while at the bar it was of sup 
importance. Even when the Eoman began to philoso} 
seriously, it was always practical ethical studies that attr 
him. Some substitute had to be found for national tradi 



342 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

and for lost gods. But in its larger scientific aspects, philo- 
sophical study was alien to the Eoinan mind, and took the 
form, as we see in Cicero, of literary and academic exercita- 
tions. About oratory, however, they were very much in 
earnest. 

Yout^ s of high intellectual amlition did not rest satisfied 
with jde instruction obtainable at Rome, but (at least after 
80 B.*;;.) resorted to Athens and other philosophical and rhe- 
torical centres. In the last decades of the Eepublic there 
were many famous schools of this higher class. In addition to 
Athens, the mother city, we have the great university schools 
of Rhodes, Apollonia, Mitylene, Alexandria, Tarsus, Perga- 
mus, and afterwards, in imperial times, Smyrna and Ephesus. 
In the time of Cicero Marseilles also was already a widely 
known school. 

Women shared in the literary culture of Rome ; but only 
to a restricted extent. That girls occasionally attended day- 
schools, at least towards the end of the Republic, is certain ; 
but speakmg generally, their education was domestic and 
conducted by private tutors. But many possessed high 
culture. Referring to tlie Gracchi Cicero says, non tarn in 
gremio educatos quam sermone matris. Much later, similar 
testimony is borne to the mother of Agricola by Tacitus. 

But although the Roman always remained Roman in the 

midst of Hellenic influences, he had lost, long before the 

time of Augustus, the old primitive simplicity of life. 

Probably Cato the elder was tlie last genuine representative of 

this, and there is a suspicion of affectation in his intellectual 

narrowness, frugality, and hardiness. The severe and even 

^<"f^n Roman family life penetrated by a moral and religious 

it had, to a large extent, disappeared owing to contact 

other nations and the new liberal education. Wealth, 

ry, and Greek scepticism, had begun to weaken the 

vn fibre. There were always some, of course, who repre- 

,d the ancient spirit and who, in the words of Cicero, 

1 Hellenic culture ad doviesticum majorumqiie morem ; 

the mass of the upper classes, having lost the Roman 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 343 

faith, began to find tlieir life-aim in personal ambition and 
aggrandisement, save when they adopted a cosmopolitan 
philosophy and lived apart. 

Discipline. Teachers. School-liouses 

Discipline. — The school discipline was severe. Plautus 
('Bacch.' iii. 3. 27), says 

Cum librum legeres si unam peccavisses syllabam 
Fieret coriiim tain maculosum quam est nutricis pallium. 

The rod and strap ^ were freely used both in the elementary 
and secondary school. All are famihar with Horace's 
Orbilius plagosus (' Ep.' ii. 1. 70), who transferred to the 
school the discipline he had learned to suffer and enforce as 
a soldier. Juvenal refers to school punishments (i. 15), 
where it would appear that ' to withdraw the hand from the 
rod ' was a phrase for leaving school. Ausonius speaks of 
the school resounding with many a stroke {multo verhere). 
Martial refers to the ' melancholy rods, sceptres of peda- 
gogues,' ' Ferulneque tristes sceptra psedagogorum ' (x. 62). 
He also speaks of the teacher as ' clamosus,' and it is both 
to ludimagistri and grammatici that the epithets ' ssevus,' 
' acerbus,' ' plagosus,' were justly applied by liim. Notwith- 
standing that Martial in the epigram just quoted appeals to 
the schoolmaster to be kind to his pupils, if he would have 
them love learning ; that the stern Cato in his lost book ' De 
Liberis educandis,' denounced those who strike women and 
children ; that Quintilian protested against the practice ; 
that one distinguished teacher was opposed to flogging in 
the generation preceding Quintilian ; that Verrius Flaccus 
followed a milder way; that Seneca advocated lenity, and 
that Cicero said that virtue was to be instilled, not by 
menaces, force, and terror, but by instruction and persuasion 
— notwithstanding all this, the severe disciphne continued. 

1 Hor. Silt. I. 319, refers to sc«/!tca as a whip more severe than the flagellum, 
and both were more severe than the ferula, but I am not aware that the two 
former were used in schools. 



344 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Augustine as a boy had to endure severe castigations (370- 

80 A.D.). 

The school hours were long, often beginning before day- 
light and going on till the evening with an interval for din- 
ner. There appear, however, to have been no home lessons.^ 
The pupils seem to have spoken aloud when learning, and 
the masters out-shouted them. Martial (ix. 69) says : 

Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue, 
Thou head detested by the younger crew 1 
Before the cock proclaims the day is near 
Thy direful threats and lashes stun my ear, &c. 

There were a considerable number of short holidays 
throughout the year, in addition to every eighth day. But 
the four months' holiday beginning in the middle of June is 
now understood to have been confined to rural and elementary 
schools. 

We do not hear of rewards for merit till the time of 
Augustus. It was Verrius Flaccus who first introduced the 
custom of giving book prizes ; but both in Augustan times 
and thereafter they were rare. 

Position of the Teacher. — The pedagogue who had 
charge of the boy night and day, and held a paternal rela- 
tion to him, accompanied his charge to school, sat there with 
him, and brought him home again. He had considerable 
powers granted to him with a view to secure obedience, 
although he was almost always only a slave. The Eomans, 
however, seem to have taken more pains in selecting their 
pedagogues than the Greeks did. Their reward, when their 
task was completed, was usually the gift of their freedom. 

In the time of the Empire, as well as of the Eepublic, the 
position of the elementary teacher was very humble ; and 
before tlie Empire even the graramaticus, though more es- 
teemed, did not stand high. It was Julius Caesar who first 
gave Roman citizenship to the grammatici. Indeed, the oc- 
cupation of elementary teacher — it could not be called a 

1 Ussing says that time was given also for gymnastic. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 345 

profession — was looked upon with contempt. Held of low 
estimation in the best Attic time, it fell still lower in the 
Koman. I have already quoted from Lucian in the chapters 
on Greek education, and other references might be given 
here to Latin writers. Justin, among others, when he refers 
(xxi. 5) to the story of Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse 
having become a primary teacher after his expulsion, uses 
the following words : ' humillima quseque tutissima existi- 
mans, in sordidissimum vitse genus descendit.' Among 
Greek fragments there is one which says of a man who had 
disappeared, ' he is either dead or become a primary teacher.' 
The teachers were always slaves or freedmen, and had to 
maintain a daily contest with their unruly pupils. All 
references to the circumstances of teachers before the time 
of Cicero represent them as in poverty. The payments to 
them were for a long period in the form of ' honoraria ' 
rather than fees. They had to take what they could get. 

The grammatici, as I have already indicated, held a higher 
position and were spoken of with some respect ; but it was 
only of the rhetoricians (who corresponded to our modern 
professors), that respectful and laudatory remarks are made 
by Eoman writers. 

It was in the first century of our era that the word ' pro- 
fessor' began to be used as applied to experts in some of the 
* liberal arts.' Quintilian (xii. 2) says : ' Si geometrse et mus- 
ici et grammatici ceterarumque artium profcssores omnem 
suam vitam, quamhbet longa fuerit, in singulis artibus con- 
sumpserunt,' &c. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian the 
title was given to the public, established and paid lecturers 
in the Athenseum at Eome. The designation 'professores 
medici ' seems first to have made its appearance in the time 
of Severus (193 a.b.)} 

^ Seneca was probably tlie first to use the designation Professor. He 
speaks {Ep. 89) of ' professores eloquentiae.' It will probably be found that 
it was only to rhetorical teachers, and not to philosophers, that the word was 
applied in the first instance, and then to other specialists. The title ' pro- 
fessor ' was in the course of time extended to the grammatici and to the 
instructors in mathematics and medicine. 



346 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Both grammatici and rhetoricians often made large 
fortunes. As to the social status of all of them we must 
remember a fact which influenced the ancient mind to an 
extent which we fail fully to comprehend, viz. that they 
taught for money. It has also to be noted that they were 
not held to ' educate,' but only to teach certain subjects, and 
to take their payment hke dealers in other articles. 

School-houses, &c. — Neither among the Greeks nor 
Eomans were these universal or even common in our 
modern sense ; nor were they built for educational pur- 
poses. Adventure teachers (and all were adventure 
teachers) naturally provided their own schoolrooms. For 
a long period any room was good enough for giving ele- 
mentary instruction. Sometimes schools were held in the 
open air, in some quiet corner of a street or market place. 
Horace ('Bp.' i. xx. 17) says: 

Ut pueros elementa docentem 
Occupet extremis in vicis balba senectus.-^ 

In the earlier times we read of tahernm — sheds or booths ; 
and these taherncB in later times were like shops or ' leanto's ' 
opening on the street, and attached to even fashionable 
houses. The children for the most part sat on the floor, 
or, if in the street, on the stones. But the schools of the 
grammatici seem to have been generally the covered spaces 
attached to larger buildings, ' giving ' on the street and pro- 
vided with benches for the children, the master occupying 
a high seat or cathedra? Sometimes they were very much 
like the verandah of a house. The schoolrooms {pcrgulm 
magistrates) were also frequently adorned with works of 
art — both in sculpture (marble or plaster) and in painting. 
They were open and accessible to all. Parents and other 

1 That this passage is relevant might be doubtful were it not for other 
confirmatory knowledge. Dion. Chrys. Or. 29, is aptly quoted by Orellius. 

2 The assistant (adjutor, or sub-doctor) sat on a stool. The benches had 
no backs, nor were there desks. The pupils wrote on their knees. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 347 

members of the public frequently dropt in to see the boys 
at their work, and there were great ' speech-days.' 

The books were rolls of MS. {vohtmina) , which the chil- 
dren carried to school in cylindrical wooden boxes. 

The state took no charge of either schools or school- 
masters ; all was left to the parent. 

The wealthier families of Eome were not, however, (as I 
have so often pointed out) dependent solely, or even chiefly, 
on schools. Both grammatici and rhetoricians were em- 
ployed in private houses to transcribe MSS. and to educate 
the children. It is to this form of private education that 
Quintilian objected. 

In early imperial times the number of schools, primary 
and secondary, began to increase rapidly, and in some cases 
the teachers were engaged by the municipalities and were 
paid a fixed salary. We see the beginning of this custom 
shadowed forth in a letter from Pliny to Tacitus which we 
shall quote in the sequel. 



CHAPTEK IV 

DETAILS OF INSTEUCTION AND METHOD IN THE GRAMMATI- 
CAL AND RHETORICAL SCHOOLS 

We have been speaking generally of the course of instruc- 
tion in Rome. Let us now endeavour to penetrate into the 
inside of the Roman grammar and rhetorical schools and 
see the mode of j)rocedure in more detail, if possible. ^ 

The School of the Grammaticus. — The exercises of 
the grammatical school-boy were (1) Reading, to which, 
as I have said, great attention was paid. It was a fine 
art. (2) Reproducing short tales or fables orally, and 
then writing them as exercises in composition. (3) Para- 
phrasing. This was graded. The younger pupils were 
restricted to the employment of the poet's own words when 

1 FollowiiiL' to a considerable extent the guidance of Professor Jullien. 



348 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

turning his lines into prose order. The more advanced did 
not mangle the poet (as we moderns do), but were re- 
quired to expand his lines into prose rhetorical form and 
might take all sorts of liberties so long as they did not 
go beyond the meaning of the poet. This was in truth a 
rhetorical imitation of the poet and doubtless a valuable 
exercise. (4) Short sentences (sententiix) were given on 
which they rang changes of number, case, and syntactical 
construction; just as, in our best schools, boys are required 
to convert direct into indirect in Latin, and vice versa. 
(5) Pithy sentences were also given and the pupil re- 
quired to explain them, and also to paraphrase them as 
we have above explained paraphrasing. (6) Prosody and 
the practice of verse-writing were taught. 

Translation from Greek into Latin was not practised in 
the advanced rhetorical schools until after the time of Augus- 
tus. In modern schools we have found this exercise so valu- 
able for boys that we cannot but be surprised that it was not 
practised from the very first by the practical Eomans. 
Cicero speaks of the great benefit he had obtained from it ; 
but translation, as practised by him, may rather be called 
imitation. 

The above exercises combined with a close critical study 
of the language and the literary qualities of poems, and the 
free and elocutionary delivery from memory of numerous 
passages, constitvited the principal work of the grammar 
school. 

But there was a tendency in these schools towards the end 
of the Eepublic to retain boys longer than formerly, and to 
introduce them to exercises in declamation on moral ques- 
tions of a general kind and in giving descriptions of things 
and events (the higher forms of oratory — the judiciary and 
the deliberative — being specially reserved for the advanced 
schools of the rhetoricians). Quintilian complains of this in- 
trusion of the grammaticus on the rhetor. It was the Latin 
grammaticus who was chiefly guilty of thus stepping beyond 
his own sphere, his school being, in the majority of cases, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 349 

attended after the school of the Greek grainmaticus. It is 
manifest that the practice was of doubtful educational value, 
inasmuch as it led to premature and showy exhibitions of 
oratory and thus interfered with the more thorough prepara- 
tory linguistic discipline. Especially would this evil be 
accentuated by the competition among masters for pupils and 
the gullibility of the Koman parent, who was doubtless as 
easily imposed on as the British father. 

It is not to be supposed that the Roman boy had thrown 
on him the impossible task of producing the exercises above 
referred to without help and guidance. The Greek rhetori- 
cians had reduced thesis-writing and declamation to an art, 
and the logicians had helped them. ' Topics ' (tottoi, places, 
and in Latin, loci) had for theu' object the fixed development 
of a subject in a certain form and the art of finding argu- 
ments. Without entering into details (which, however, are 
interesting educationally), I shall borrow from Professor 
Jullien a statement of the topical hints for an exercise on a 
chria, i.e. dictum, or pregnant sentence, ascribed to some dis- 
tinguished man : e.g. Plato says that ' the Muses dwell in the 
soul of the cultured man.' 

1. A laudation of the writer to whom the utterance or 
deed was ascribed. 

2. The paraphrase, in which the thought was expanded. 

3. The motif or underlying principle which explained and 
justified the truth of the thought. 

4. Comparison, i.e. the comparing of the thought with 
other thoughts like or unlike, just as Plutarch compares 
characters in his ' Lives.' 

5. The example : which was furnished by some distin- 
guished man. 

6. Witnesses to confirm the dictum, i.e. quotations from 
authorities who had said the same, or a similar, thing. 

7. Conclusion : which often took the form of a practical 
exhortation. 

So guided, and with models of similar exercises before 
him, often written by his master, the boy could scarcely fail 



350 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

to produce a fairly good essay or declamation, especially as 
the learning by heart of the poets had stored his mind with 
words and felicitous expressions. It was held to be a merit 
to borrow from distinguished writers, and not a fault. In- 
deed, even in mature authors we find in ancient times and 
during the latter half of the middle ages a very free use of 
the productions of their predecessors. It seems to me that 
plagiarism may be said to have become a moral offence only 
in modern times. 

Loci communes (common places) were declamations against 
particular vices and in support of virtues in the abstract. 
They were thus general in their treatment. But in these, as 
in all other exercises both of the grammatical and rhetorical 
schools, there was a recognised development of the theme. 
The treatises on rhetoric were intended to help invention, to 
practice in the use of correct language, in the nature and use 
of tropes and figures of speech and in all the devices whereby 
a speaker could influence his fellow men. 

The Oratory to which youths were trained, after going 
through such preparatory instruction as I have outlined in the 
school of the grammaticus, was deliberative and judiciary — 
that is to say, eloquence suited to a public assembly or senate, 
or to the bar. As Professor Jullien says, it was professional 
instruction as opposed to the liberal instruction of the gram- 
matici. The line of demarcation, however, between the 
grammaticus and the rhetorician was never clearly defined. 
Much depended on the teacher, as it always does where all 
are struggling, each for himself. 

That tlie work of the student of oratory was not narrow, 
illiberal, and purely technical may be learned from Cicero, 
and from Quintilian passim. As regards the strictly tech- 
nical training I may with advantage quote from the ' De 
Oratore,' i. 31, a passage which admirably sums up the whole 
process. 

' In the first place T will not deny that, as becomes a man 
well born and liberally educated, I learned those trite and 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 351 

common precepts of teachers in general : first, that it is the 
business of an orator to speak in a manner adapted to per- 
suade ; next, that every speech is either upon a question con- 
cerning a matter in general, without specification of persons 
or times, or concerning a matter referring to certain persons 
and times ; but that, in either case, whatever falls under 
controversy, the question with regard to it is usually, 
whether such a thing has been done, or, if it has been done, 
of what nature it is, or by what name it should be 
called ; or, as some add, whether it seems to have been done 
rightly or not. That controversies arise also on the interpre- 
tation of writing, in which anything has been expressed 
ambiguously, or contradictorily, or so that what is written is 
at variance with the writer's evident intention ; and that 
there are certain lines of argument adapted to all these cases. 
But that of such subjects as are distinct from general ques- 
tions, part come under the head of judicial proceedings, part 
under that of deliberations ; and that there is a third kind 
which is employed in praising or censuring particular per- 
sons. That there are also certain common-places on which 
we may insist in judicial proceedings, in which equity is 
the object ; others, which we may adopt in deliberations, all 
which are to be directed to the advantage of those to whom 
we give counsel ; others in panegyric, in which all must be 
referred to the dignity of the persons commended. That 
since all the business and art of an orator is divided into 
five parts, he ought first to find out what he should say ; 
next, to dispose and arrange his matter, not only in a certain 
order, but with a sort of power and judgment ; then to clothe 
and deck his thoughts with language ; then to secure them 
in his memory ; and lastly, to deliver them with dignity and 
grace. I liad learned and understood also, that before we 
enter upon the main subject, the minds of the audience 
should be conciliated by an exordium ; next, that the case 
should be clearly stated ; then, that the point in controversy 
should be established ; then, that what we maintain should 
be supported by proof, and that whatever was said on the 



352 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

other side should be refuted ; and that, in the conclusion of 
our speech, whatever was in our favour should be amplified 
and enforced, and whatever made for our adversaries should 
be weakened and invalidated. 

' I had heard also what is taught about the costume of a 
speech ; in regard to which it is first directed that we should 
speak correctly and in pure Latin ; next, intelligibly and with 
perspicuity ; then gracefully ; then suitably to the dignity of 
the subject, and as it were becomingly ; and I had made 
myself acquainted with the rules relating to every particular. 
Moreover, I had seen art applied to those things which are 
properly endowments of nature ; for I had gone over some 
precepts concerning action, and some concerning artificial 
memory, which were short, indeed, but requiring much exer- 
cise ; matters on which almost all the learning of those 
artificial orators is employed ; and if I should say that it is 
of no assistance, I should say what is not true ; for it conveys 
some hints to admonish the orator, as it were, to what he 
should refer each part of his speech, and to what points he 
may direct his view, so as not to wander from the object 
which he has proposed to himself. But I consider that with 
regard to all precepts the case is this, not that orators by ad- 
hering to them have obtained distinction in eloquence, but 
that certain persons have noticed what men of eloquence 
practised of their own accord, and formed rules accordingly ; 
so that eloquence has not sprung from art, but art from elo- 
quence ; not that, as I said before, I entirely reject art, for it 
is, though not essentially necessary to oratory, yet proper for 
a man of liberal education to learn. And by you, my young 
friends, some preliminary exercise must be undergone ; 
though, indeed, you are already on the course ; but those who 
are to enter upon a race, and those who are preparing for 
what is to be done in the forum, as their field of battle, may 
alike previously learn, and try their powers, by practising in 
sport.' 

So far as we know the course of training thus generally 
sketched by Cicero, it may be concisely summed up thus : 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 353 

When the Ehetor began from the beginning he carried the 
youth through the exercises which I have abeady described 
as the higher work of the grammaticus, and then gave more 
advanced work on the same hues while he dehvered or 
dictated lectures on the theory of eloquence. Subsequent 
exercises consisted of speeches prepared by the pupils, of 
a demonstrative, deliberative, or judiciary character. The 
demonstrative consisted very much of the laudation or un- 
favourable criticism of certain historical, or it might be 
imaginary, acts and characters ; the deliberative was an 
argument addressing itself to the question whether any act 
should have been done or not ; the judiciary was in the form 
of a pleading before a judge — attack and defence. These 
pleadings were often regarding fictitious cases, sometimes 
regarding cases that had actually been in the courts. The 
general course of instruction applicable to all forms of oratory 
embraced Invention, i.e. the finding of arguments ; Disposi- 
tion or arrangement ; Style or elocution ; Memory and its 
cultivation ; and Action or delivery. Disputations were con- 
ducted by the students, under the guidance of the rhetor. 
All sorts of subjects were propounded, but chiefly those hav- 
ing a political or ethical significance. In imperial times, and 
probably earlier, the rhetors themselves would have public 
bouts, and people would flock to hear them and encourage 
them with their plaudits. Divorced, however, as the exercises 
were from all direct bearing on political action, they tended 
more and more to become mere declamation. 

We now see that the education which took shape to itself 
under the Eoman sway, and which was summed up in the 
word humanitas, was almost wholly a literary education, 
based, however, on a thorough grammatical study. It is 
important to note this, and the relative place assigned to 
other studies, because of its bearing on the history of educa- 
tion even down to our own times. 

It is, I think, sufficiently clear that, notwithstanding the 
literary character of the education, private and public utility 
governed the Eoman practice. Eoman education was Greek, 

23 



354 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

but it was Greek translated into Latin. The liberal arts were 
all cultivated at Rome, but not by Romans. They were to 
be enjoyed, not pursued. Greek aliens — very often slaves 
or freedmen — represented all the arts, and were hired. Play- 
acting, though regarded as a degrading employment, was yet 
of ' use ' to the orator by teaching him gesture : sculpture 
was of ' use ' for public monuments and portraiture, and so 
forth. 

Literature, it is true, was in esteem both as a study, an 
educational instrument, and as a recreation ; but, above all, 
as necessary to form the orator. Literature for the sake of 
literature, art for the sake of art, were to the Greek familiar 
conceptions ; and in his schools it was the real of literature, 
the enriching of the mind with noble utterances and noble 
forms, which was always prominent. In the case of the 
Roman we find the discipline of grammar take precedence of 
the living spirit of literature, without, however, by any means 
extinguishing it. 

Of course there were many individual exceptions to the 
Roman view of art and the arts among the Romans them- 
selves ; but the general utilitarian tendency of the Roman 
mind was always in evidence. The Hellenic ideal of a 
cultured man — cultured for the sake of culture — was never 
accepted by the Roman, save in a half-hearted way. Indeed, 
he had great contempt, and with good reason, for much of 
the product of the Hellenic system. The lively Greek who 
frequented the streets of Rome and other Italian towns, and 
who in his easy self-confidence was ready to talk, and to 
talk well, on any subject and in favour of any side, was 
antagonistic to the Roman type of character, and to that 
serious view of life which had made the Roman and which 
seemed still to survive in spite of growing luxury, an en- 
feebled public spirit, and a decaying morality. 



I have already said that the loss of the writings of Terentius 
Varro (died 26 B.C.), the ' most learned of the Romans,' has 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 355 

deprived us of much that would have thrown additional light 
on the actual state of education and of learning immediately 
before the birth of Christ. One of his works was entitled 
* Libri Disciplinarum.' All the more valuable are the writ- 
ings of Quintilian whicli appeared in the last decade of the 
first century a.d. In him we see the highest type of teacher 
which the ancient world produced, with, perhaps, the single 
exception of Isocrates ; and from his writings we can learn 
both what the Komano-Hellenic education was in its inner 
working, and also what, in his opinion, it ought to have been. 
His works, accordingly, are not only of great importance in 
the history of education as formulating the aims and method 
of the best kind of Romano-Hellenic school, both grammatical 
and rhetorical ; but they also contain so much practical 
instruction for the teacher of all time that I shall now speak 
of him and his treatise in some detail, confining myself, how- 
ever, to what is specially instructive to the teacher of the 
modern school. I am justified in giving this prominence to 
Quintilian by the further fact that he has governed all 
modern education since the Eenaissance ; and, in truth, we 
have not even yet advanced so far as wholly to restore the 
school of Quintilian. The nearest approach to it were the 
schools of Vittorino da Feltre in the fourteenth and Hegius, 
Michael Neander, Trotzendorfl', and Sturm, in the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. 



CHAPTER V 

THE SCHOOL OF QUINTILIAN 

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was born at Calagurris 
(Calahorra) in the upper valley of the Ebro about a.u. 
38.1 jjg seems to have been taken by his father to Rome 

1 Many say 35, and till recently 42 was the accepted date. I give a date 
between the two as being the most probable. Seneca was born a year or two 
before the birth of Christ ; Plutarch 48 or 49 A.D. (about the same time as 
Quintilian), and Tacitus about 61 a.d. 



356 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

when quite a boy to prosecute his studies. His father was 
himself a teacher of rhetoric. At the age of about 25 he 
returned to his native place, where he remained several years 
in the practice of his profession. At about the age of 30 he 
again came to Eome in the retinue of Galba (a.d. 68) and 
began to practise at the bar, attaining some distinction, 
especially for his clear, exact, and logical statement of cases. 
Dr. Peterson in his edition of Book X. quotes from Hild as 
follows : — ' Among the orators of the day, some, ignorant 
and coarse, had left mean occupations for the bar without 
any preliminary study, where they made up in audacity for 
lack of talent, and in noisy conceit for a defective knowledge 
of law ; others were trained in the practice of delation to 
every form of trickery and violence ; Quintilian, honest, able, 
and moderate, stood by himself.' 

Later in life he began to give instruction in the oratorical 
art, including under this, however, a wide range of gram- 
matical and literary culture, which he thought necessary to 
the education of the true orator. Among his pupils was the 
younger Pliny. He acquired a great reputation as an in- 
structor, and more honour than was usually conferred on 
teachers of rhetoric in those days. Domitian gave him per- 
mission to wear the insignia of a man of consular rank. It 
is to this that Juvenal refers in the line (Sat. vii. 186), 

If fortune be kind, you will from a rhetor become a consul.^ 

The well-known passage in Suetonius' ' Life of Vespasian ' 
(c. 18) marks the first State action for the maintenance of 
public schools : ' Vespasianus, who first fixed out of the 
public treasury a salary of 100 sestertia each to the rhetors, 
Greek and Latin ^ ' (estimated at about 800iJ. a year). As 
Vespasian reigned from a.d. 71 to a.d. 79-, the most active 
period of Quintilian's scholastic career, we may conclude 
that he was one of the rhetors endowed by Vespasian, all 

1 ' Si fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul.' 

2 ' Qui primus e fisco Latinis Graecisque rhetoribus annua centena con- 
stituit.' 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 357 

the more that the 'Eusebian Chronicle' (Eoth's ' Suetonius,' 
p. 272) says : ' Quintilian, a Calagurritan from Spain, the 
first to open a public school in Kome and to. receive a salary 
out of the public treasury, flourished.' ^ Eeferring to his 
work as a pubKc instructor, Martial says,^ ' Quintilian, su- 
preme governor of unstable youth ; Quintilian, glory of the 
Eoman gown ! ' 

After twenty years' teaching he retired from active life at 
the early age of about fifty, although after his retirement he 
was employed as a private tutor at court to Domitian's two 
grand-nephews (a.d. 93). 

At the urgent solicitation of many friends and admirers, 
and also to put a stop to the circulation of notes of his 
lectures, published with his name but without his authority, 
he now began to prepare and arrange, with a view to publi- 
cation, the abundant materials amassed in the course of an 
active professional life. This occupied him a period of only 
two years (probably between a.d. 93 and 95). The solicita- 
tions of his publisher led him to issue his work sooner than 
he would otherwise have done. He died before the end of 
the first century a.d. at the age of about sixty. He himself 
tells us that he lost his wife when she was only nineteen, 
and that the two boys she left behind her also died, the 
younger at five years old and the elder at ten. 

The books which he published, sometimes called ' Oratori- 
cal Institutions,' are known under the title of ' Twelve Books 
on the Education of an Orator': ' De Institutione Oratoria' 
are the words which he himself uses in a prefatory letter to 
his publisher, Trypho. 

Quintilian was one of the most Roman of the Roman men 
of letters. Not only because of the national note in his 
style as a whole, but for the legal precision and directness 
of his thought and language, and for the soundness and 

1 ' Quintilianas, ex Hispania, Calagurritaims, qui primus RoniEe publicam 
scholam Qaperuit] et salarium e fisco accepit, claruit.' 

2 'Quintiliane vagaj moderator summe juventse, 
Gloria Romanse Quiutiliaue togse.' — ii. 90. 



358 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

moderation of his judgments. There is the calmness of 
scientific exposition about his reasoning, wholly unlike our 
modern style of writing into which we are apt to introduce, 
even unconsciously, a certain amount of open or latent 
passion. Political and religious bias dominates even our 
abstract philosophy and political economy. Every reader 
will be disposed to concur in the estimate of Bahr in his 
' Geschichte der Eomischen Literatur,' where he says : ' We 
find in Quintilian a genuinely critical spirit, a sound judg- 
ment, and a truly practical sense, a pure refined taste, 
a wide literary culture, and an extensive acquaintance 
with the whole range of Greek and Koman literature* 
(p. 325). 

In exposition, Quintilian never uses a single word more 
than is necessary to express his thought. He has none of 
the amplitude of language which belongs to Cicero. It is 
possible that he did not admire copiousness of language as 
distinguished from copiousness of argument. It certainly 
strikes the reader that while Quintilian was capable of a 
far more exact philosophical style than Cicero, richness 
and abundance of language were alien to his cast of mind 
as well as forbidden by the strictly practical aims of his 
book. 

But how is it, we are first disposed to ask, that a book 
on the education of the orator should in these days con- 
cern us as educationalists, except in a very subordinate 
way ? The answer is alre9,dy partly given in the preceding 
chapter. 

Quintilian started with a very enlarged conception of the 
training requisite for an orator. This designation, indeed, 
as used by him, may be regarded as synonymous with a 
completely cultivated man. ' Others,' he says, ' have begun 
their treatises on rhetoric as if they were merely putting 
the finishing touch of eloquence on pupils already masters 
of every kind of learning ' (Prooem. 4) ; ' but I am of opinion 
that to make an orator we must begin from the beginning, 
and I consequently/ he adds, 'shall begin to shape the 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 359 

studies of an orator from his infancy just as if he were 
handed over to me to bring up.' He accordingly proposes 
to start ah ijjsis cUscendi velut incunabulis (as it were from 
the very cradle of learning). 

Quintilian does not imagine that education can do every- 
thing. On the contrary, he tells us that unless Nature 
helps, all instructions will be useless. ' lUud tamen in 
primis testandum est, nihil praecepta atque artes valere 
nisi adjuvante natura. Quapropter ei, cui deerit ingenium, 
non magis litec scripta sunt quam de agrorum cultu steril- 
ibus terris ' : ' First of all I must bear witness to this, that 
precepts and arts are of no value without the assistance of 
nature. Wherefore to him who wants talent these writings 
are of no more significance than an agricultural treatise to 
barren lands.' At the same time he held with Isocrates and 
Cicero that natural powers could be largely augmented and 
adorned. 

Cato the elder, in his lost treatise on education, affirmed 
it to be the aim of education to produce the bonus vir. 
Quintilian substitutes for this the bonus orator, and in 
doing so he places himself in more direct sympathy with 
the practical aims of the post-republican Eoman life and 
education. He in fact extends the aim of Cato when in 
the beginning of the twelfth book he defines the orator to 
be ' The Good Man skilled in speaking ' — Vir bonus dicendi 
peritus. Mere facultas dicendi he despises. His idea of 
an orator is in fact that of a learned, cultivated, virtuous 
philosopher who, qualified by certain innate or acquired 
aptitudes, is engaged in the highest practical affairs of life. 
Practical life for all is always assumed. In the twelfth 
book, indeed, he talks with some disdain of philosophers, 
because they withdraw themselves from public occupations. 
He desires to form a ' Roman philosopher.' ^ ' The man I 
educate I should wish to be a Roman philosopher who, not 

1 ' Ilium quern iristituo, Romanum quendam velirn esse sapientem, qui 
non secretis disputationibus sed rerum experimentis atque operibus vere 
civilem virum exhibeat.' — xii. 27. 



360 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

by disputations apart but by dealing with practical life and 
by public activity, shows himself to be truly a vir civilis' 
(a man occupied with affairs that concern the commonweal). 
We manifestly require in such a man, he says, not only the 
highest ability but also every virtue of the mind. Accord- 
ingly, he aims at forming a man who is in the best sense 
of the word a citizen, adapted for the administration of 
public and private affairs, who is competent to govern cities 
by his counsels, to institute them by his laws, and to 
improve them by his judicial decisions. Then as to the 
virtues : an orator has to discourse on matters relating to 
justice, temperance, and fortitude, and how can he do so 
effectively unless he himself is distinguished by these 
virtues ? 

The orator, let us remember, had a large and important 
function in the public life of the ancients. He was not 
merely a pleader at the bar, but also before public assemblies. 
He influenced the whole policy of a country, and among 
other functions discharged the duty of the modern publicist. 
At first sight, we may be disposed to question the necessity 
of goodness and virtue to a good orator ; but a little reflec- 
tion will satisfy us that, when we fully realise the scope of 
the orator's function as understood by the ancients, we must 
admit with Quintilian that the truly good orator must him- 
self be good. We all recognise the contrast between learn- 
ing and wisdom : but it is important to note also that 
intellectual ability, even the highest, is not necessarily wis- 
dom. The moral element must dominate. Quintilian did 
not stand alone in his opinion. ' Depravity,' says Aristotle, 
' perverts the vision and causes it to be deceived as to the 
principles of action, so that it is really impossible for a per- 
son who is not good to be really wise and prudent.' And 
how can a bad man give sound counsel in an oration ? To 
the extent to which the counsel, the persuasions, the argu- 
ment are unsound, it is bad oratory. Coleridge, in his 
'Table-talk,' cites from Stralio the opinion, 'to be a good 
poet one must be a good man.' Carlyle, again, says, ' The 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 361 

real quantity of our insight — how justly and thoroughly we 
shall comprehend the nature of a thing, especially of a 
human thing, depends on our patience, our fairness, loving- 
ness, what strength soever we have ; intellect comes from the 
whole man as it is the light that enlightens the whole man.' 
(Vol. V. of 'Miscellanies,' p. 125.) The significant thing for 
us to note as students of education is that Quintilian, like all 
competent thinkers on this subject, aimed at a moral result 
as the supreme end. In our great schools do we consciously 
do this ? If we do not, then, with all our ' classical ' preten- 
sions, we are followers neither of the best Greeks nor 
Romans. There must be something wrong. Quintilian 
held that a man could not be engaged in the pursuit of those 
noble studies of literature and philosophy which were indis- 
pensable to the education of an orator, unless he were free 
from vice. From which may we not conclude that occupa- 
tion with ennobling studies is the greatest safeguard of 
youth ? ^ 

Mere eloquence in the ordinary sense, fluent faculty of 
speech, did not constitute an orator in Quintilian's view. He 
even absorbed the title philosopher into that of orator, as did 
Isocrates. He wished to produce a man ' optima sentientem, 
optimeque dicentem ' (xii. 1. 25) ' thinking the best things 
and expressing them in the very best way,' and not a mere 
mercenary pleader in the forum, or a claptrap popular talker. 
By giving to philosophy a practical character and testing it, 
as it were, by its power of doing practical service to the 
state, he maintained even for philosophy a higher standard 
than then existed in many of the schools of Greece and Alex- 
andria. We do not quarrel with Quintilian, then, because, 
under a very natural tendency, peculiar to his age and 
nation, to magnify the office of the rhetorician, he used the 
word orator as a synonym for the perfectly trained and fully 
equipped citizen : nor yet because he held that the perfect 
orator w^as also necessarily the perfect citizen. He admits 
that no man ever was what he aims at producing ; but none 

1 ' Iq eodem pectore nullum est honestorum turpiumque consortium.' 



362 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

the less ought we all to aim at the ideal,^ ' none the less, are 
we to strive after the highest ; even if this is not attainable, 
nevertheless those who strive after it will go higher than 
those who, having despaired by anticipation of reaching their 
object, forthwith pull themselves up and halt at the bottom 
of the hiU; 

We see, then, that the analysis of the writings which 
Quintilian left behind him must furnish us with a knowledge 
of the best educational conceptions possible in his time, pre- 
sented in a form thoroughly trustworthy, inasmuch as they 
come from a man of long experience as a teacher, and of a 
temper whose ardour was moderated by cool reason and 
sound judgment. They will also admit us to a knowledge of 
the kind of training through which the wealthier classes of 
Koman youth — those who sought to govern their country — 
were carried at the beginning of the Christian era, when the 
Hellenic influence was completely established. 

I do not pretend to give an exhaustive account of Quin- 
tilian, but merely to bring into view his leading principles 
and methods as these are expounded in his first two books, 
and only in so far as they may bear on school work in these 
days. I shall make such reference to his subsequent books 
as will enable the reader to form an adequate conception of 
the way in which he discharged the task he imposed on 
himself. 



At the end of his preface, Quintilian gives us a prehminary 
survey of his plan, as follows : 

The first book will contain those things which precede the 
proper work of the teacher of rhetoric. 

The second book will treat of the elements of rhetoric. 

The next five will be devoted to Invctitio, including 
arrangement (Disjpositio). 

1 ' Non ideo minus nobis ad snmma tendendum est . . . quod si non con- 
tingat, altius tamen ibunt qui ad sumina niteiitur quaui qui, prresumpta de- 
speratione quo velint evadendi, protinus circa iraa substiterint ' (i. 19). 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 363 

The next four will be devoted to Elocution (i.e. style), in- 
cluding memory and pronunciation {i.e. delivery). 

In conclusion will be considered the cultivation of the 
orator personally, and as a pleader. 

First Booh 

In his first book, Quintilian deals with the instruction of 
children before the age of seven. After many warnings as to 
the necessity of providing nurses whose moral character is 
good, and who have sufficient education to set a good ex- 
ample in speaking, he takes up the intellectual instruction of 
the child. 

He objects to the learning of the alphabet in a memorial 
way, so that children early acquire the habit of saying the 
letters, trusting to their memory alone. He advises that the 
shape and name be always impressed on the child together, 
and recommends the tracing over of letters which have been 
cut on a board. He also recommends the use of ivory figures 
of letters as playthings. When they begin to read words, 
let the reading be very slow and distinct, he says ; otherwise, 
by hurrying the child, or permitting the child to hurry, you 
form a bad habit and retard progress. 

As to writing, he evidently considers that this art is best 
begun by tracing the letters on the board referred to above, 
and thereafter by copying good specimens, according to our 
modern usage. He thinks that the lines which the pupil is 
required to imitate should convey moral lessons which he 
will carry with him to old age. He also thinks that a 
child, m learning to write, should not be constantly exer- 
cised on ordinary words, but on the more unusual words, 
that he may acquire betimes a knowledge of terms which, at 
a later period of his studies, may be useful to him. He 
points out that, as future progress and cultivation depend so 
much on the art of writing, the pupil should learn to write 
quickly as well as well, and well as well as quickly. 

Memory, he thinks, may be even at this early age culti- 
vated, and passages from the poets and utterances of learned 



364 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

men learned by heart. For this he gives a curious reason, 
that at this age a teacher can do little for the education of 
children (as they can produce nothing from themselves) 
except cultivate their memory. 

Above all, he impresses on his readers that children are 
not stupid ; that they are ready in thinking and prompt in 
learning (' faciles in excogitando et ad discendum promptos ') ; 
that it is as natural for the human animal to be so as it is 
for birds to fly, horses to run, and wild beasts to be savage. 
' Characteristic of man is a certain stirring and dexterous 
movement of mind, and hence the belief in the celestial 
origin of the soul.'^ It is the want of proper training which 
dulls the childisli intelligence. Minds naturally stupid and 
unteachable do certainly exist, but only as monstrosities 
exist — and they are few in number. Yet some have greater 
natural aptitude than others. 

He objects to Eoman boys learning Greek exclusively for 
too long a period ; but he holds that they should begin with 
Greek (he must mean in the secondary or grammar school), 
taking to Latin in a year or two. and learning it thereafter 
pari passu with Greek. Greek, let us remember, was at this 
time, and, indeed, long before, taught to all the upper classes 
as the source of Eoman literature, and it was also known 
colloquially to the upper classes and to merchants and others 
through the large number of Greek slaves and psedagogi who 
frequented Eome, and the universal relations which Eome 
had with the whole civilised world. 

Qumtilian now proceeds to discuss the respective merits 
of public and private education. By public education was, 
in his time, meant day-schools, such as we are familiar 
with in Scotland and Germany. Public schools — in the 
restricted sense of schools in which boys were educated 
away from the influence of their parents, being boarded at 
the seat of their education, either in the school buildings 
or in affiliated houses — are institutions more characteristic 

1 * Nobis propria est mentis agitatio at(j[ue sollertia, unde origo aniiui coe- 
lestis creditur.' 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 365 

of England than of any other country, though of course 
known in other countries : in all, indeed, to a cei'tain extent 
indispensable. Quintilian, accordingly, is contrasting domes- 
tic as opposed to school instruction. He argues the ques- 
tion, which in his day was evidently of great importance. 
Nowadays it has less interest. We are all persuaded that 
boys, at least, are better instructed m some public fashion, 
although we may differ as to the desirableness of removing 
them from the parental roof altogether. 

Quintilian draws a very black picture of the domestic life 
of many Komans — their daily habits of luxury, their sensu- 
ality, and their licentious conversation and songs. No day 
public school could be otherwise than beneficial to the boy 
of such a family. That is certain. We feel that the ' tone ' 
of a day-school as a whole could not fail, however defective, 
to be better than the tone of a boy so reared. The school 
would have to guard against him, not he against the school. 
In these days we are scarcely, indeed, interested in this ques- 
tion in the form in which it presented itself to Quintilian ; 
education is now for all, and Quintilian assumes that those 
who prefer private education employ private preceptors and 
pedagogues, which is possible only to the few wealthy. 
Public day and public boarding schools are both alike with 
us simply a necessity, and no amount of argument can now 
touch the question. The only point which calls for discussion 
in these days is the relative advantages of these two classes 
of ' public ' schools. We shall find the arguments of Quin- 
tilian not altogether inapplicable to this modern question. 
For he bases his argument for day-schools mainly on the bad 
influences of the pupil's home, and the consequent luxury, 
effeminacy, viciousness, and self-conceit which flow from 
tliese. So now we may (without formally entering into the 
discussion here) say that where the domestic atmosphere is 
bad because of the luxuriousness of homes, the preoccupation 
of the parents with other things than the bringing up of their 
children, and the evil influences flowing fi-om the subservi- 
ency and flattery of menials, the children should certainly be 



366 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

removed to some other place where they may JBnd that true 
home which their parents have denied them. For such chil- 
dren a day-school is better, much better, than nothing ; but 
a public home school — if I may so designate it — is best 
of all. 

Quintilian remarks, in connection with school work, on 
the advantages of emulation, and points out that it is easier 
for beginners of tender years to imitate their fellow-pupils 
than their teacher. He refers to a custom which prevailed 
in the school in which he was himself instructed. The boys 
were assigned a certain order in speaking or declaiming the 
passages they had learned — the best being assigned the 
highest place, and adds (a suggestive fact) that every thirtieth 
day a fresh arrangement of the order was made according to 
the results of a fresh exercise. If we would imitate this, 
adapting it to modern school life, we should have monthly 
examinations to determine the places of boys in a class — a 
far sounder system than trusting to the chances of daily 
'place-taking,' which, moreover, has many collateral dis- 
advantages. 

One other observation Quintilian makes which we may 
here quote. He counsels masters to moderate their strength 
so as not to burden the undeveloped powers of the learners, 
but rather to descend to the level of their understanding 
— ' ad intellectum audientis descendere.' He compares the 
ambitious attempt to give boys more than their stage of 
progress admits of to the pouring of a gush of water into a 
narrow-necked bottle. The water is lost, whereas a gradual 
inpouring of it little by Httle fills the bottle. 'What is 
greater than the understanding of a boy,' he says, 'will 
not enter his mind at all, because it is not open to appre- 
hend it.' 1 

He then is led aside to speak of the natural endowments 
and disposition of boys. He considers that memory — that 
is to say, that kind of memory which both acquires easily 

» 'Majora intellectu velut parum apertos ad percipiendum animos non subi- 
bant' (28). 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 367 

and retains long — is the chief early sign of ability in chil- 
dren. The next indication of talent is the power of imita- 
tion ; but if this takes the direction of imitating deformities 
or peculiarities it is a very bad sign. He speaks strongly of 
this, and says that this mimicking tendency in a boy gives 
him no hope of his ever having a good disposition. The 
pupil whom he prefers is he who is capable of receiving what 
is taught without difficulty and is disposed to ask questions ; 
but inclined to follow rather than to run on ahead. The pre- 
cocious boy seldom yields good fruit in the long run. He 
can do little things with great ease, and, instigated by self- 
confidence, desires to show at once all he can do. Without 
any signs of bashfulness, he strings words together fluently. 
There is no true force, and what power he shows has not deep 
roots ; and so on. 

As to natural disposition ; he points out that all boys do 
not yield to the same motives. ' Some are remiss, unless you 
urge them on ; some resent commands ; some are restrained 
by fear ; and others are enfeebled by it ; continuity of study 
shapes some, others get on with more of a rush. Give me 
the boy,' he says, ' whom praise excites, whom glory urges, 
who weeps at defeat.' 

Quintilian advocates relaxation and play ; but he gives us 
no indication of the amount of daily headwork he expected 
of a boy. The time-table of a Koman school would be an 
interesting monument. He considers that boys' dispositions 
appear more frequently in play than anywhere else : they then 
reveal themselves unconsciously and we can correct faults 
while the boy is yet of tender years. (The playground, then, 
seems to be with Quintilian part of the school.) 

As to corporal punishments, Quintilian has very decided 
opinions. The passage is a celebrated one among educational- 
ists, and I shall give it here. 

' I do not at all approve of boys being flogged, although it 
is an established practice and one approved of by Chrysippus. 
I object to it, (1) because it is a disgusting practice and fit 
only for slaves, and indeed if you change the age of your 



368 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

pupil, a personal insult ; (2) because if the mind of a boy is 
so illiberal (ungenerous) as to be inaccessible to reproofs, he 
will simply be hardened to the infliction of stripes Uke the 
worst of slaves ; (3) because there will be no need whatso- 
ever of castigation if the superintendent of his studies (exactor 
studiorum) be persistent. As things are now, it would seem 
that the negligence of psedagogi is made amends for, not by 
requiring boys to do what is right, but by punishing them 
for doing what is wrong . . . [Not to dwell on these matters,] 
it is enough to say that to no man ought too much liberty to 
be allowed in dealing with pupils of tender years and easily 
injured.' ^ 

Secondary Instruction 

Quintilian now supposes a boy to be able to read and write 
Latin, and he considers that the fundamental discipline next 
necessary for him with a view to his cultivation is grammar. 
He prefers to begin with the Greek Grammar. Following 
the same opinion, it was customary throughout Europe till 
recently, as we all know, to begin with Latin Grammar, and 
to trust that boys would see their way through the grammar 
of their native tongue by means of the Latin. Hence ' Gram- 
mar' schools. I have already pointed out that there were 
both Greek and Latin Grammar schools. Greek Grammar 
schools preceded Latin ones. On this point there is an 
interesting quotation from a lost letter of Cicero's given by 
Suetonius in his Life of the rhetorician L. Plotius Gallus, 
which I may here introduce : 'I remember well that when 
we were boys, one Lucius Plotius first began to teach Latin ; 
and as great numbers flocked to his scliool, so that those who 
were most devoted to study were eager to take lessons from 
him, it was a great trouble to me that I too was not allowed 
to do so. I was prevented, however, by the decided opinion 
of men of the greatest learning who considered that it was 
best to cultivate the mind by the study of Greek.' 

^ Plato and Seneca had objected to severity and force before Quintilian. 
Cicero ('De Orat.' i. 58) is frequently referred to as opposed to coercive means, 
but he is speaking quite generally and not of schools. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 369 

Quintilian lays great stress on the accurate and detailed 
knowledge of grammar, including what we now call his- 
torical grammar, the inquiry into the sounds of letters, the 
transposition and substitution of vowels and consonants by 
reference to ancient Latin and Greek forms : then the study 
of the parts of speech, and inquiry into etymologies, syno- 
nyms, &c. The difficulty of fixing the number of the parts 
of speech and the difference of opinion as regards their origin 
and proper classification is, Quintilian thinks, no argument 
against the study. I may be allowed to interpose here that 
it is an argument /or the study. These grammatical founda- 
tions should be surely and soundly laid according to Quin- 
tilian, as the basis of future literary culture. And so far 
Quintilian was right, if we grant him that the object of all 
training is to train a man who can speak well and write well. 
In these days w^e may follow Quintilian with safety, notwith- 
standing his apparently limited view of the end of education 
— because he has already said that only the man trained in 
all the virtues and in practical philosophy is the true orator. 
Mutatis mutandis we must indeed heartily concur with Quin- 
tilian, for a man who would speak well and write well must, 
first of all, know what he is speaking about, and in the 
second place he must have been a student of words, of style, 
and of literary expression. But words alone, considered 
grammatically, though an important and indispensable dis- 
cipline, w411 not give him power of speaking or writing with 
effect. In modern times, then, we must extend the matter 
of education if we are to carry out Quintilian's instructions. 
But while so saying, we must concur with him in thinking 
that the analysis of language — that is, of words and sen- 
tences, and also of mere forms and of etymologies, is pro- 
ductive of much benefit to the intelligence of a boy, and 
gives a firmness and solidity to the intellect which even 
logic will fail to give where there has been no such prior 
grammatical discipline. As to Quintilian's opinion that we 
should begin with a foreign tongue, we must bear in mind 
our change of circumstances ; the grammar of our own 

24 



370 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

language is now considerably developed and systematised, 
and the science of comparative philology has thrown great 
light on origins. Accordingly, English, in the hands of a 
man of grammatical and philological mind, is now capable of 
being used as a most valuable instrument both of instruction 
and discipline. Then, again, the grammatical study of 
Greek was more advanced than that of Latin in Quintilian's 
time ; and there were other good reasons. A potent argu- 
ment also which would not suggest itself to Quintilian for 
beginning with the grammar of our own tongue is that the 
boy already knows it, practically and implicitly. We liave 
only, by pursuing the analytico-synthetic method to raise 
the indefinite experience to true knowledge — make explicit 
what is implicit. This is instruction in the grammar of the 
vernacular. 

Quintilian now deals with the use of words, inculcating 
the avoidance of ' barbarisms ' (which are defined to be faults 
in respect of individual words), solecisms, &c. Quintilian's 
remarks here contain little of value to us as teachers beyond 
impressing on all who may read them the importance of 
employing only such words as are correct in substance and 
in form. It is not wasted time to direct the attention of 
scholars to mere words ; this is a popular error : the study of 
words with special reference to their comparative fitness to 
express a thought, and to their purity of origin, is a valuable 
discipUne. Words carry ideas. 

In speaking of correct language generally, Quintilian 
points out, to begin with, that it rests on ratio, vetustas, 
auctoritas, and consuetudo (reason, antiquity, authority, and 
custom). He then considers each of these sources, or rather 
guarantees, of correct language in a chapter full of interest 
for the student of the Latin tongue and of general ety- 
mology. After all, in the selection of words we must be 
guided by the custom of our time, says Quintilian, not the 
custom of the multitude but the ' consensus eruditorum ' 
(learned or educated men), just as the consensus of good 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 371 

men determines custom as regards manner of living (Horace 
speaks also of the usus loquendi). 

He next deals with the ivriting of words as the previous 
chapter dealt with words spoken. The spelling of words 
is considered here. His general conclusion as to spelling 
is that words should be written as they are sounded, inas- 
much as the very use of written characters is to represent 
sounds. He makes an exception, however, where custom 
declares strongly for a spelling though it be inconsistent 
with the sound. 

To the teaching of good reading he attaches, as did all 
Eomans and Greeks, great importance. Reading is to be 
taught with care, the boy being taught when to read 
slowly, when with more rapidity, when to speak with 
vivacity, and when with gentleness of tone. All this 
depends on practice; and I have, he says, only one thing 
to enjoin : ' that he may do all these things let him under- 
stand what he reads.' He adds, and I think the remark 
as applied to reading is worth our attention, ' Let the read- 
ing be manly and grave, but grave with a certain sweet- 
ness.' The poets are not to be read like prose writers ; at 
the same time they are not to be read in a sing-song tone, 
nor ' plasmate effeminata ' — that is to say, rendered effemi- 
nate by an exaggerated and affected modulation. He tells 
us that Ctesar once said to a reader of this last kind ' Si 
cantas, male cantas ; si legis, cantas ' (if you are singing, 
you sing vilely; if you are reading, you sing). He objects 
to speeches in poetry being uttered by the reader as an 
actor would utter them ; but thinks a difference of tone 
necessary in order to show that they are speeches. 

The substance of what is read should be morally good 
and inspiring, while the literary character of it should be 
worthy of imitation. Homer and Virgil therefore should 
be read, and the poets generally, taking care to give to 
boys only what is morally pure. Those things are to be 
chiefly perused by boys which most of ^11 nourish the 
talent and enlarge the mind — books on learning being 



372 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

postponed. Manliness of thought and expression are to 
be gained from a study of the older writers. 

He then refers to the course to be pursued by the teacher 
iu examining on the passages read. The verses should be 
parsed and scanned. Peculiarities in the use of words 
should then be brought out and the different senses in 
which certain words may be taken. But above all, the 
teacher should point out the beauty of the arrangement, 
the charm of the subject matter, the appropriateness of 
the words to the character represented, what is worthy of 
praise in the substance, what in the words used, and so 
forth. Historical allusions should be explained ; but the 
pupil should not be overloaded with these, but confined 
to what is related by authors of mark. 

While boys are still young and not yet ready to be 
handed over to the rhetor, the beginnings of the art of 
speaking should be taught. Boys should, after they have 
left behind them nursery stories, be exercised in relating 
the fables of ^Esop, and afterwards writing down the nar- 
ration. Then they should be required to paraphrase the 
poets, and to give brief statements regarding events or char- 
acters which have a moral significance. (This, I think, was 
what was known as ' description '). 

Quintilian now, leaving the study of language, adverts to 
those other studies which are necessary to the orator, or com- 
pletely educated man, taking up specially mathematics and 
music. 

The word music among the ancients, I may here recall to 
the reader, was a word of varying application. Sometimes it 
had the limited signification which we attach to it. At 
other times it was regarded as including also grammar and 
geometry ; and again in its wider sense it included all educa- 
tion, save that which had to do with the discipline and 
development of the body, which was called gymnastic. 

The importance of music, in its restricted sense, for the 
orator was evident ; for he must understand and practise 
rhythm in his sentences and utterance. Mathematics, which 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 373 

covered both arithmetic and geometry, can, I think, be shown 
to be indispensable only on the presumption that we regard 
the orator as our type of an educated man. If we do so, all 
that Qumtilian says about the importance of musical and 
mathematical studies will receive the heartiest support of all 
competent persons. The grounds on which he advocates 
music are of a practical kind, and the same applies to his 
advocacy of geometry. The educational ends of the Romans 
had always (as I have frequently said) an objective and 
practical character. The recognition of the fact that there 
was a certain constitution of mind and the relation of educa- 
tional instruments to the full development and discipline of 
the mind, as mind, does not seem to have been entertained 
by them. By this I do not mean to convey that the efficacy 
of certain studies in sharpening the intelligence, such, for ex- 
ample, as dialectic and mathematics, was not recognised ; 
but merely that the development of mind as such was not 
the object they had in view. With the Athenian Greeks, 
and to some extent even, with the Spartans, it was otherwise. 
Culture was aimed at — a complete harmony of nature — 
mmd and body. The object in view with the Eonians on the 
contrary was to make a man apt for affairs, or, as with 
Quintilian, a perfect orator, which mcluded the former. 
The practical issue of all education was never lost sight of. 

Quintilian, neither in speaking of music or geometry, sug- 
gests methods of procedure, but he says much that is perti- 
nent with reference to both. His remarks on the importance 
and influence of music are eloquent and recall the Ciceronian 
style. When speaking of the importance of musical rhythm 
to the orator, he says with epigrammatic force : ' Both by the 
tone of voice and the modulation, music sounds forth grand 
things in a lofty style, pleasant things sweetly, ordinary 
things gently, and in its whole art it is in harmony with the 
feelings that are expressed.' ^ The musical education was in 
fact instruction in rhythm and intonation. 

^ ' Et voce et modulatione grandia elate, jucunda dulciter, moderata leniter 
canit, totaque arte consentit cum eorum quae dicuntur affectibus ' (24). 



374 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

As to geometry, Quintilian argues not only for its practical 
utility, but also for its use as exciting the intelligence, sharp- 
ening the wits, and giving greater celerity of perception. 
Then he shows that geometry is more closely allied to logic 
than to rhetoric and lauds it as an exercise in deductive 
reasoning. Note here that in Quintilian's scheme of educa- 
tion, physical science was included, because he finally rests 
the claims of geometry on its being the engine whereby we 
rise to a knowledge of the ratio mundi and learn that there 
is nothing which is not ordered, nothing which is fortuitous. 

Elsewhere (in the introduction to the eighth book) Quin- 
tilian points to the importance of instruction in things : 
' Curam verborum, rerum volo esse solicitudinem ' (I desire 
that there be care for words but a solicitude for things) ; 
again, ' Sit ergo cura elocutionis quam maxima, dum scimus 
tamen ^Jiihil verborum causa faciendum, quum verba ipsa 
rerum gratia reperta sint.' (' Let there be the greatest pos- 
sible care for expression as long as we recognise the fact that 
nothing is to be done for the sake of words, since words 
themselves have been invented for the sake of things.') 

Quintilian now passes outside general education and pro- 
ceeds to discuss the training which is peculiar to the future 
orator only ; and although what he says is well deserving of 
all who hope to distinguish themselves in the pulpit or par- 
liament or at the bar, it bears only very partially on the 
question of general education. He recommends the student 
of oratory to take lessons from an actor, but only with a 
view to pronuntiatio,hj which he means both the correct and 
full pronunciation of words, the delivery of passages convey- 
ing different kinds of sentiment, and the facial movements 
to be used, or rather to be avoided. As the pupil gets older, 
he recommends the recitation of good speeches to his master 
in the style he would liave to adopt in pleading. Gesture 
should be learned from the masters in the paltestra. But 
Quintilian draws a strong line between what is becoming in 
an actor and in an orator respectively. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 375 

As to the capacity of the young to study a great many 
subjects together, Quintilian gives expression to what is char- 
acterised by soundness of judgment and freshness, force, and 
even fervour of style. ' People,' he says, ' who talk of the 
difficulty of learning many subjects at the same time, forget 
the nature of the young mind — its facility of movement, its 
2>liancy and its interest in many things. They also forget to 
remember that the doing of things is not so fatiguing as cogita- 
tio or thought ; further, that children do not put force on tliem- 
selvcs, but are guided by others.' He also points out the 
refreshment which is obtained by varying studies, and even 
by passing from reading to writing about the same subject. 

He dwells with force on the importance of early instruc- 
tion in any department which a man is afterwards thoroughly 
to know, illustrating this by the case of imported slaves who 
are very long of overcoming the difficulties of the Latin 
tongue, whereas children speak freely two years after they 
have begun to pronounce words. The Greeks called those 
who excelled in their own special art pcedomatheis — that is 
to say, instructed from boyhood. (Plato in his ' Laws ' also 
speaks of this.) In brief, we try to excuse our own sloth by 
talking of the difficulty which attends the thorough study of 
many subjects, says Quintilian. 

Having now come to the close of the second part of a boy's 
education, that pursued under the grammaticus, and given 
him a tliorough foundation, Quintilian next hands him over 
to the rhetor (what we should call university teaching) and 
the subjects to be pursued under him are considered in the 
second book. 

Second Booh 

Higher Instruction 

After discussing the age at which a young man should pass 
out of the hands of the grammaticus into the hands of the 
rhetor, just as we now discuss the age for passing from a 
High School to an University, in the course of which he 



376 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

remarks that tlie rhetor had for some time been disposed to 
leave part of his proper function and do the work of the 
grammaticus, he dwells with great force on the importance 
of selecting instructors who will not only afford an example 
of the strictest virtue themselves, but be prepared to exercise 
considerable sternness in controUing the morals of those who 
frequent their schools. 

Here, when endeavouring to guide the master, he gives 
him advice which shows that he has gone straight to the 
heart of the whole matter. Act, he says, as if you were the 
father of the pupils. Accept all the responsibilities which a 
parent feels. Avoid a gloomy austerity lest it give rise to 
contempt. As a teacher, far removed from heat of temper, 
but yet not a compounder of faults which ought to be cor- 
rected ; simple in teaching, patient of labour, persistent and 
steady rather than immoderate in your demands. ^ Eeady 
with an answer to all who ask questions and asking ques- 
tions of those who do not seek information. In praising the 
exercises of your pupils neither grudging nor effusive, be- 
cause in the former case there arises a weariness of the 
labour of preparation, and in the latter a disposition towards 
carelessness. In correcting what is in need of correction, let 
not the teacher be bitter, and least of all contemptuous, be- 
cause when the master finds fault as if he had a personal 
hatred the effect is to drive his pupils from the design of 
study. Daily let him say many things which his pupils 
will carry away with them, for the living voice is more 
potent than precepts which are written, especially if the 
pupils love and respect their master. 

Quintilian objects to allowing the students to applaud each 
other's exercises, as tending to abuse and as leading the 
pupil to look away from the right source of judgment which 
is the master. 2 

1 As a teacher, 'minime iracundus, nee tamen eorum quse emendanda 
erunt dissimulator, simplex in docendo, patiens laboris, assiduus potius quam 
immodicus ' (5). 

2 Chapter 3. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES '611 

He is now led aside for a moment to animadvert on the 
tendency of parents to think that a second-rate or tliird-rate 
master will ^o well enough for their sons before they reach 
a certain age and while yet in the elements of a subject, and 
he points out the fallacy which underlies this view. He 
also maintains that the ablest man is the best teacher. 

I may remark that it is commonly said that men who are 
profoundly versed in any subject often teach it very indifl'erently . 
I am disposed to agree with Qumtihan that the ablest and 
profoundest scholar will teach most simply, most clearly, and 
most successfully. It certainly is the case that many men 
of profound attainments in a subject cannot teach it ; but it 
is equally true that more men who have superficial acquaint- 
ance with a subject cannot teach it. This is because both 
alike want the disposition to teach and the faculty of teach- 
ing. The question really is : given two men of equal teach- 
ing disposition and faculty, which of these will teach a 
subject best, the man of shallow, or the man of profound 
attainment ? I think there can be no doubt of the answer 
to this, and we must agree with Quintilian ; but we must 
beware of concluding with him that profound knowledge 
implies the fitness to teach. A recent writer in reply to a 
remark by Dr. Pusey who had said that a man who knew a 
subject thoroughly could teach it, answered with great point 
that it should rather be said that ' a man who could teach a 
subject thoroughly, knew it.' On the other hand, men of 
known superficiality often seem to teach exceedingly well. 
This is in the experience of us all ; but I believe it to be a 
delusion. They teach well, though their knowledge be super- 
ficial ; but it is necessary to note that their teaching also is 
superficial, and though it may serve well enough the objects 
of those who desire a smattering and seek display, it is never 
sound teaching. It cannot possibly be so. The very words 
used by such an instructor in teaching will want that exact- 
ness and precision without which there is no true learning. 
They will not represent realities either of nature or thought, 
but confused and loose images of realities only, while all 



378 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

that the subject of the lesson truly suggests will be lefv, 
outside. 

Some of Quintilian's words in this connection are worth 
quoting : e.g. ' He will not count that man among precep- 
tors at all who will not give care to small things. Method, 
which is of such moment in teaching, is plainest and simplest 
with the most learned : things taught by the most learned 
are also so taught that they are more easily understood and 
more lucid; the less genuine ability a man has, the more 
does he attempt to raise himself up and stretch himself out : 
the less he is competent the more obscure he will be.' 

Let a preceptor, then, he concludes, be eminent for his 
eloquence [or, as we should say, his learning] and for his 
moral character, that so, like Phoenix the tutor of Achilles, 
(' II.' ix.), he may train his pupils both to speak and to act 
[i. e. to know and to do] . ' 

Quintilian now passes from general observations and 
enters more fully on the duties proper to the Ehetorician, 
and we shall here part company with him. The extent to 
which the art of oratory was cultivated and the laborious, 
and (as we now think) vain and futile detail into which it 
was carried in ancient times has little save a historic interest. 
In its historical aspects, however, it is for the educational- 
ist worthy of separate study. 

There are, however, some good remarks on the training of 
boys in narrative composition ; and also on the nature of 
boys themselves. He prefers, he says, the boy whose com- 
positions show a certain fecundity, although they may be 
crude and characterised by want of judgment and taste. 
This gives hope of future strength. The cure of fertility is 
easy ; but no toil will overcome barrenness. He has little 
hope of that kind of nature in boys which shows itself in 
judgment anticipating growth of mind.^ This is, I think, 

1 Chapter 4. 

2 ' Facile remedium est ubertatis ; sterilia nullo labore vineuiitur. Ilia mihi 
in pueris natura minimum spei dederit in qua ingenium judicio prtesumitur.' 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 379 

what Goethe calls a matured judgment in an immature mind, 
So he objects to a dry master — magister aridus — just as 
one objects to a dry hard soil for tender plants. Moisture 
is needed. Such masters make their boys small and narrow. 
In learning merely to avoid faults under such masters, the 
pupils fall into the greatest fault of all — that they have no 
virtues. The teaching of such a man I may call ' negative ' 
teaching. 

For myself I am persuaded that in the teaching of Latin 
and Greek, and still more of our own tongue, the culture of. 
the whole man which flows from the study of Kterary expres- 
sion and art, is seldom yet adequately understood. It is to 
this capacity for giving aesthetic and moral culture as well 
as a close intellectual discipline, that we must finally rest 
the claims of the ancient classics on the continuous attention 
of youth. Not that I in any way depreciate the work of the 
grammaticus ; very far from it, for I hold that there can be 
no strict and, therefore, no genuine culture which is not 
based on the studies in which it is the special function of 
the grammaticus to guide boys. For those who hold these 
views, and who desire to give this culture, the study of what 
Quintilian now says will be fruitful.^ 

He first lays stress on reading in class from good authors, 
preferring to take the best authors at once. At the age at 
which boys went to the rhetor there could be little difficulty 
in introducing them at once to the best literature of their 
country. It is only when good literature is given to minds 
as yet unripe for it, that it excites aversion, and rightly does 
so. In studying any piece of literature, the teacher, Quin- 
tilian says, must direct attention to the circumstances under 
which the writing that his pupils are studying was produced, 
its logical arrangement and persuasive power, pointing out in 
brief all the virtues of language and form. He even thinks 
that bad specimens of oratory may be taken, that their vices 
of language, style, and arrangement may be pointed out. 

1 Chapter 5. 



380 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

Such writings, he says, should be commented on to show- 
that notwithstanding their popularity, they are full of 
obscurities, inappropriateuess of language, turgidity, mean- 
ness, effeminacy, &c. — the very reason, indeed, why many 
praise them. For there is a tendency (especially I may add 
on the part of youth) to thmk that a direct manner of expres- 
sion and a natural utterance are destitute of genius, while 
lanuuaoe out of the ordinary course is held to be in some 
way more select and worthy of admiration. The preceptor 
also will test his pupils by asking questions so as to obviate 
listlessness and inattention, and thereby also to lead to inde- 
pendence of judgment; for we teach in order that teaching 
may not be always necessary. This kind of literary training 
Quintilian thinks to be of more value than the study of all 
the treatises on rhetoric that ever were written. 

Quintilian is of opinion that, while the best writers should 
be read, those should be first studied whose writings are 
most transparent, postponing, for example, Sallust to Livy. 
He also thinks that the study of the antique writers of a 
language should come last, or at least only after the style 
and judgment are formed, for the reason that while they are 
weighty with thought, their expression is faulty (though 
doubtless excellent for its time). The pupils, not being 
competent to appreciate the thought fully, are apt to run 
into an imitation of a style alien to their own time, and to 
imagine that so they resemble these great writers of antiquity. 
As to contemporary writers, however good they may be, he 
holds that we ought to postpone the reading of them also, 
lest imitation should take precedence of the power of sound 
judgment.^ 

Quintilian, speaking of reproduction, thinks that when a 
theme is given, the master should for some time at least give 
instructions how it is to be worked out before the pupil 
begins to work at it ; and not content himself with merely 
finding fault when it is done. He also is of opinion that 

^ Chapter 5. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 381 

pupils should rarely be allowed to recite their own com- 
positions, and that the effort of memory necessary to 
do this will be better expended by learning by heart 
and reciting the best passages of eminent writers. The 
memory will be better exercised in this way, and the pupils 
will also acquire a good stock of phrases and forms of 
expression.^ 

He now deals with a question often discussed since 
Quintilian, viz. : whether the peculiar intellectual tendencies 
of various boys should be specially cultivated, Nature, as it 
were, giving us a hint in what direction it desires different 
boys to excel. Quintilian, as aiming at producing the perfect 
orator, which is his expression for the perfectly educated 
man, could not of course take this view. While the special 
talent has to be alone cultivated in those whose general 
capacity is weak, and who will not yield any return to 
attempts to educate him all round ; yet in all stronger natures 
we, while promoting the clear purposes of nature hi different 
boys, must yet give general training concurrently. At the 
same time it would be a waste of time to strive after what 
manifestly cannot be accomplished, and wrong to turn a 
youth away from that which he can do best to something 
which he can do, but not so well.^ 

Turning now from the teacher to the pupil, he calls on them 
to love their teachers as well as their studies, and to regard 
them as jjarentes non quidem corporum sed mentinm. They 
will thus come together with pleasure and alacrity ; found 
fault with, they will not be angry, praised they will 
be glad, by their zeal they will deserve their teacher's 
love.^ It is the duty of teachers to teach, but equally 
of learners to learn. And then he concludes with an ob- 
servation which merits to be inscribed on the porch of every 
school. 

1 Chapter 7. 2 Chapter 8. 

3 < Einendati non irascentur, laudati gaudebunt, ut sint carissimi studio 
merebuntur,' 



382 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

As you may sow seeds to no purpose unless the furrows, soft- 
ened beforehand, nourish them, so eloquence [education] declines 
to grow and thrive save by the sympathetic concord of giver and 
receiver.^ 

He next refers to the practice in the ancient schools of 
encouraging pleadings on imaginary or fictitious cases with 
a view to the formation of the pleader, and recommends 
the practice with this precaution, that these should not be 
vague and turgid but as like as possible to the reality. 
Even names should be put in to give them a more real 
character, while at the same time elegance is to be aimed 
at.^ And these remarks lead him to a somewhat severe 
criticism of those who think that no training in oratory is 
needed and that nature and natural force are to be trusted. 
The observations made here strike me as applying with 
great force to those who hold that education is a subject 
which it is superfluous for educators to study. At the 
same time, he says that while art is necessary to the study 
of art, yet the art must be of a general or universal kind 
and not descend to petty directions, but leave freedom for 
the adaptation of an orator to the circumstances under 
which the oration is delivered. In like manner, I would 
say : — It is not our business to give * quasdam leges im- 
mutabili necessitate constrictas studiosis educandi' (certain 
laws bound together by an immutable necessity to those 
desirous of educating), but rather principles and general 
methods.^ 

In the nineteenth chapter he recurs to the question 
whether Nature or learning does most for the orator, and 
comes to the conclusion that if you consider each as sub- 
sisting independently of the other, Nature does most; if 
both co-exist moderately but in equal proportions. Nature 

1 ' Sicut . . . frusti'a sparseris semina nisi ilia prsemolitus foverit sulcus, 
sic eloquentia [for which read educatio] coalescere [grow and thrive] negat, 
nisi sociata tradentis accipientisque Concordia.' 

2 Chapters 11 and 12. 8 Chapter 13. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 383 

does most ; but in the finished or perfect orator learning or 
art does most. 



The next five books of Quintilian deal with invention in 
oratory and the arranging of what is invented ■ — the logic 
of an argumentative discourse. 

In the introduction to the eighth book he gives a clear 
and excellent summary of the instructions he has laid 
down as to the rules of oratory under the various heads of 
invention and arrangement. In modern times we should 
consider a young man's time wasted who spent it over 
these books, and yet it is generally allowed that Quintilian 
had simplified the subject of rhetoric considerably. In 
the procemium, Quintilian seems to become half aware of 
this himself. Many things, he says, should be taught by 
Nature herself, and precepts should not so much seem to 
have been invented by teachers as observed hy them as they 
occurred. Here we have a hint as to the true method of 
teaching rhetoric, or the perfect in expression, viz. by 
reading and criticising excellent models. And what is 
this but evolving the abstract out of the concrete along 
with the pupil : in brief, proceeding analytically and in- 
ductively with a view to the discovery of the general 
and the abstract ? It seems to me that rhetoric ought to 
be taught as grammar ought to be taught ; and by the study 
of rhetoric I mean (1) the study of the logical consecution 
of an argumentum as uttered ; and (2) the study of its 
aesthetic characteristics. 

Quintilian condemns, as strongly as any sense-realist of 
modern times could, those who ' grow old in the empty 
pursuit of words' (quodam inani verhorum studio senescunt 
(Lib. viii. Procem.)). Our business is to see to things, that 
is, facts and thoughts, first, and thereafter to fit the words 
closely to these. By ' things ' Quintilian meant realities of 
thought as well as of sense.^ What, then, would Quin- 

1 This passage has often been misapplied. 



384 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

tilian have said of Latin verses and elegant Latin prose 
for English youth if he thus discouraged inane verborum 
studium in Latin for a Latin ? The only possible defence 
is that Latin verse-writing cultivates the faculty of expres- 
sion and the aesthetic perceptions generally in connection 
with the language in which we think — our vernacular. 
Does it do so ? I do not speak of poets, for they stand 
apart, it may be held ; but are our best prose writers and 
our best aesthetic critics the men who wrote the best Latin 
and Greek verses at school and college ? Is it not in point 
of fact generally quite otherwise ? Are not such linguistic 
performances actually hurtful ? Does not Nature avenge 
itself on those who think too much of words instead of 
things ? Do they not belong to the Xoyo8aiSa\oi, cunning 
word-artificers of whom Plato speaks ? Such linguistic 
tours de force are very clever exercitations — the very high- 
est of clever exercitations, we may admit. But they are no 
more. If they are to be cultivated at all (beyond the stage 
of simple translation of English words into Latin verses 
with a view to quantities), the cultivation of them should 
DC confined to specialists — men who mean to live by Latin 
and Greek. For them it is the efflorescence of their studies. 
Why, indeed, do we learn Latin or Greek ? For the sake 
of the literature these tongues enshrine of course, and for 
the sake of historic culture; but also for the sake of lan- 
guage-discipline and that training in literary perception 
which is aesthetic discipline. We assuredly cannot attain 
our end unless we write Latin or Greek prose, and also do 
a little in versification. This may be admitted; but if we 
keep in view the end proposed — linguistic disciplme, the 
most important of all possible disciplines, because lan- 
guage is the reflex of thought, and, so regarded, covers the 
whole of life — we shall restrict our exercitations in ancient 
tongues within narrow limits. In Latin prose, e.g. syntactical 
accuracy we must have, and also Latinity — that is to say, 
an approach to the Latin cast or mould of expression : in 
verse, however, we shall confine ourselves to the transla- 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 385 

tion of English sense into Latin verse for the sake of quanti- 
ties and of famiharising the pupil with the poetical idiom 
of the Konians ; but beyond this we shall attempt nothing 
save as rare and voluntary exercises for the few. So with 
Greek. Words, as Quintiliau well says, were invented for 
the sake of things, not things for the sake of words. 

When Quintilian speaks of the art of elocution, by which 
he means the speaking forth, that is to say, the form or style 
of what has been conceived in the mind, he holds that this 
requires much teaching and study. At the same time he 
never loses sight of the fact that thought, reality, truth of 
conception and aim, lie at the basis of all style. ' The best 
words,' he says, ' generally attach themselves to our subject 
and show themselves by their own light ; whereas we set 
ourselves to seek for words as if they were always hidden 
and trying to keep themselves from being discovered. We 
never consider that they are to be found close to the subject 
on which we have to speak, but look for them in strange 
places, and we do violence to them when we have found 
them.' Again, in concluding his introduction he says, ' Let 
the greatest possible care be bestowed on expression, pro- 
vided we bear in mind that nothing is to be done for the sake 
of words, since words themselves were invented for the sake 
of things, and those words are most to be commended which 
express our thoughts best and produce the impression which 
we desire.' He also says (xii. 1. 30), ' Nee quidquam non 
diserte quod honeste dicitur ' (nothing which is honestly and 
truly expressed is without eloquence). While there is much 
that is too technical for modern taste in the eighth and ninth 
books, I doubt if we could not extract from them more sound 
criticism of style and of the way of teaching ' elocution ' 
(which is style) than from any modern treatise that I have 
heard of. 

We see that Quintilian, and not only Quintilian but the 
ancients generally, meant by oratory the utterance of thought 
on every variety of subject in fit words adorned by such 
graces as the orator could command. We do not in modern 

25 



386 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

times believe that any instruction in rhetorical forms can 
give more than an artificial, and therefore a bad, rhetoric or 
style. And in truth Quintilian sees this clearly enough. 
At the same time there is such a thing as criticism ; and it 
is to this that Quintilian would introduce the student with 
a view to self-criticism, and so far there is no doubt that a 
student so trained would be preserved from many faults. 
But no amount of such training would make him an orator. 

That Quintilian had himself this view of his subject is 
everywhere manifest, not least in his interpretation of 
oratory as the general aim of education. It was the general 
aim only because the utterance of thought (there being first 
the thought) was the highest manifestation of human reason. 
Eatio and Oratio summed up the intellectual excellence of 
man. This was the position of Isocrates also. To reach 
perfect utterance, according to Quintilian, was impossible, 
without knowledge of a wide and various kind — philoso- 
phy, literature, science ; and besides these, personal virtue. 
Thus the Eoman educational aim, like the Greek, was a lofty 
one. One can easily understand how the common ruck of 
teachers in the Eoman Empire would hasten to their end 
and attract pupils who hoped by a little study of figures, 
tropes, and other rhetorical devices to become orators 'in 
twelve lessons.' The quick degradation of the educational 
aim of men like Isocrates, Cicero, and Quintilian, was cer- 
tain, because it was so easy. Lucian's satirical observations 
on sophists and orators, about 150 years later, were doubtless 
more than justified. 

But oratory, as aim, would have been even in all ages 
justified, had Quintilian's conception of the qualifications 
for it been adopted ; above all, had men never lost sight of 
things, not things of sense alone or chiefly, but things of 
mind, as the main, though not exclusive, object of study. 
The tendency of forms and formulae to usurp the place of 
realities is the characteristic not only of the history of 
religion in all countries, but also of literature, science, and 
philosophy. The vestment is more regarded than the body. 



TEE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 387 

It is only the single-minded pursuit of truth in all depart- 
ments of thought for its own sake that keeps oratory, style, 
religion, and politics ever living and true. 

The ninth and tenth books constitute a treatise on 
style, and are full of excellent advice ; but here again 
whatever rules Quintilian prescribes, he seems to be 
always conscious of the small part these play in forming 
the orator, compared with a knowledge of what has been 
done by others, and constant practice by the student him- 
self. Write, read, mark, and imitate excellencies of style. 

I know nothing likely to be of more value to young men 
•in a modern class of rhetoric and hterature than the tenth 
book. Kead for example the third and fourth chapters. 
How excellent is a saying like this, when Quintilian 
speaks of polishing the style of any literary production, 
that 'the file should polish our work but not wear it to 
nothing.' That this tenth book should be so seldom pre- 
sented for graduation examinations is evidence that Latin 
has not been taught with a view to what the literature can 
teach us, but only for grammatical and examination purposes. 
Where this can be said the university is, thus and so far, a 
mere secondary school. 

The second chapter of Book XI. contains a very inter- 
esting discussion of memory, and is, moreover, historically 
interesting as summing up all the ancients knew on this 
subject. 

The third chapter affords much instruction to both actors 
and preachers as well as public speakers, and should be 
studied by them. 

In the twelfth book Quintilian gathers up the threads of 
his long discourse. He has shown that to be an orator one 
must be carried through a thorough discipline, and that all 
literature and science must be studied. Now he concentrates 
himself on the ethical characteristics of the true orator, the 
vir honus peritus dicendi, and shows the necessity of high 
character to genuine success in oratory. 



•3S8 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

How can a man become an orator who is deficient in dis- 
cernment, judgment, and prudence ? The vicious man is 
deficient in these qualities. How can he prosecute studies 
with a single aim to excellence unless he be temperate ? 
How can the unjust man be trusted to speak of justice ? 
Wlio is most likely to attain the ends of oratory — the per- 
suading of those whom he addresses — the good and truthful 
man, or the vicious man who has no high moral standard ? 
Quintilian always distinguishes between the merely ' elo- 
quent ' man, and the perfect orator. * What I have in view,' 
he says, 'is a man who, being possessed of the highest 
natural genius, stores his mind thoroughly with the most 
valuable kinds of knowledge, a man sent by the gods to do 
honour to the world, and such as no preceding age has 
known, a man in every way eminent and excellent, a thinker 
of the best thoughts and a speaker of the best words to fit 
these thoughts.' Even in inferior employments, as in the 
courts of law, such a man will be great, ' but his powers will 
shine with the highest lustre on great occasions, when the 
counsels of the senate are to be directed, and the people to be 
guided from error into rectitude.' Such a man Vergil de- 
picts in ' ^n.' i. 148. Such an orator plants his feelings in 
the breasts of others because they are first active in his own 
breast. 

With this high standard in view a man must study phil- 
osophy — not that he may be a philosopher who simply dis- 
cusses and prescribes, but a * Bomanus sapiens ' ; that is to 
say, a man who carries his philosophy into civil life. Phil- 
osophy is divided into physics, ethics, and dialectics. By 
physics or natural philosophy Quintilian (curiously enough) 
understands the general philosophy of life and man, includ- 
ing nature and religion. It is not necessary for a student to 
attach himself to any sect of pliilosophers ; but only to 
study philosophy, and get what is noblest and best in it for 
the formation of his own character. And in saying this, 
Quintilian, in my opinion, defines the object of philosophic 
study in an university course even now. In this part of his 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 389 

treatise Quintilian again shows how small a part the mere 
rules of the rhetorician play in the forming of the orator, as 
compared with the philosopher, by quoting with approval 
Cicero as saying ' non tantum se debere scholis rhetorum 
quantum Academiai spatiis [gardens] ' ('De Orat.' 2, 23). 

When we say that Quintihan looked to the study of liter- 
ature and philosophy as that which was to make the finished 
orator, let it not be supposed that he ignored the study of 
nature. Even into the secondary school — the school of the 
grammaticus — mathematics and science entered, as I have 
shown in its proper place, and it was taken up in the higher 
course. 

The following chapters of this book deal with the special 
qualifications of the pleader, such as a knowledge of the civil 
law, &c. In the tenth chapter we have an interesting survey 
of Greek painting and sculpture, and a parallelism drawn 
between the plastic arts and oratory. 

The concluding chapter contains a vigorous and eloquent 
incitement to study and to the pursuit of all excellence. 



CHAPTER VI 

EDUCATION IN IMPERIAL TIMES 
The classical decadence 

Throughout Quintilian's treatise, while rules of composi- 
tion and of the literary presentation of thought — above 
all, of oratorical expression — receive ample treatment, the 
author is always recurring to the substance of knowledge and 
literature. The discipline, the gravity, and moral earnest- 
ness of the Eoman are always to the front, and these he 
would harmonise with Hellenic ideals. Though himself a 
provincial, he is always the grave conservative Roman : not 
by any means so Hellenic and anti-Roman as Cicero and his 
friends had been. His aims are not higher than those attrib- 
uted to Isocrates, but his mode of attaining them is better, 



390 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

as far as we know ; and this because he takes up the whole 
question of the education of a man. He wrote at a critical 
time for tlie ancient world ; but he was powerless to arrest 
the downward progress of the higher education. His book, 
says Mommsen,^ ' is one of the most excellent we possess 
from Eoman antiquity, pervaded by fine taste and rare judg- 
ment, simple in feeling as in presentation, instructive with- 
out weariness, pleasing without effort, contrasting sharply 
and designedly with the fashionable literature that was so 
rich in phrases and so empty of ideas.' 

The evils of which Tacitus, in the 'De Oratoribus,' com- 
plains, and which were to be found in Gaul and Spain as 
well as at Eome and in the East, were already visible, if not 
conspicuous, when Quiutihan began to teach. The 'De 
Oratoribus ' must liave appeared about 74 a.d. (Bahr, ii. 330), 
and therefore about five or six years after Quintilian opened 
his school.^ The language of Tacitus is, however, wholly that 
of a laudator temporis acti, yet we find in his protest so 
vivid a picture of his own conception of former ages and of 
contemporary evils, that I may with advantage to the student 
of education here quote from him. 

' It was accordingly usual with our ancestors, when a lad was 
being prepared for public speaking, as soon as he was fully 
trained by home discipline and his mind was stored with culture, 
to have him taken by his father or his relatives to the orator who 
held the highest rank in the state. The boy used to accompany 
and attend him and be present at all his speeches, alike in the law- 
courts and the assembl}^, and thus he picked up the art of repartee 
and became habituated to the strife of words, and indeed, I may 
almost say, learnt how to fight in battle. Thereby young men 
acquired, from the first, great experience and confidence, and a very 
large stock of discrimination, for they were studying in broad day- 
light, in the very thick of the conflict, where no one can say any- 

1 Book viii. cap. 2 of Hist, of Provinrcs of Roman Empire. 

- Tactitns was a man of letters who wrote alwa)'s with a view to literary and 
dramatic effect. He had also very strong prejudices and a powerfully satirical 
vein. We must take all he says ciun grano, if I may venture to say so. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 391 

thing foolish or self-contradictory witliout its being refuted by the 
judge or ridiculed by the opponent, or, last of all, repudiated by the 
very counsel with him. Thus, from the beginning, they were im- 
bued with true and genuine eloquence, and, although they attached 
themselves to one pleader, still they became acquainted with all 
advocates of their own standing in a multitude of cases before the 
courts. They had, too, abundant experience of the popular ear, in 
all its greatest varieties, and with this they could easily ascertain 
what was liked or disapproved in each speaker. Thus, they were 
not in Avant of a teacher of the very best and choicest kind who 
could show them eloquence in her true features, not in a mere re- 
semblance ; nor did they lack opponents and rivals, who fought 
with actual steel, not with a wooden sword, and the audience, too, 
was always crowded, always changing, made up of unfriendly as 
well as of admiring critics, so that neither success nor failure could 
be disguised. You know, of course, that eloquence wins its great 
and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our oppo- 
nents as from those of our friends, nay more, its rise from that 
quarter is steadier and its growth surer. Undoubtedly it was 
under such teachers that the youth of whom I am speaking, the 
disciple of orators, the listener in the forum, the student in the 
law-courts, was trained and practised by the experiences of others. 
The laws he learnt by daily hearing, the faces of the judges were 
familiar to him, the ways of popular assemblies were continually 
before his eyes ; he had frequent experience of the ear of the 
people, and whether he undertook a prosecution or a defence, he 
was at once singly and alone equal to any case. We still read 
with admiration the speeches in which Lucius Crassus, in his nine- 
teenth, CiBsar and Asinius Pollio in their twenty-first year, Calvus, 
when very little older, denounced, respectively, Carbo, Dolabella, 
Cato, and Vatinius. 

' But in these days we have our youths taken to the professor's 
theatre — the rhetoricians, as we call them. The class made its 
appearance a little before Cicero's time and was not liked by our 
ancestors, as is evident from the fact that, when Crassus and 
Domitius were censors, they were ordered, as Cicero says, to " close 
the school of impudence." However, as I was just saying, the 
boys are taken to schools in which it is hard to tell whether the 
place itself, or their fellow scholars, or the character of their studies, 



392 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

do their minds most harm. As for the place, there is no such thing 
as reverence, for no one enters it who is not as ignorant as the 
rest. As for the scholars, there can be no improvement when boys 
and striplings, with equal assurance, address, and are addressed by, 
other boys and striplings. 

' As for the mental exercises themselves, they are the reverse of 
beneficial. Two kinds of subject matter are dealt with before the 
rhetoricians — the persuasive and the controversial. The per- 
suasive, as being comparatively easy and requiring less skill, is 
given to boys. The controversial is assigned to riper scholars and, 
good heavens ! what strange and astonishing productions are the 
result ! It comes to pass that subjects remote from all reality are 
actually used for declamation.' 

Brodrick's Translation. 

Petronius Arbiter, about the same time, laments the decline 
of the higher education, and satirises the sophists. Con- 
firmatory passages might be added from Juvenal, who died 
about 120 A.D., but whose satires were probably written in 
the concluding decade of the first century. Then, about 50 
years after Juvenal's death, we can learn from Lucian what 
the tendency of the ' higher ' instruction was — all towards 
the premature fitting out of youth for success in life, by 
means of rhetoric and oratory, and a superficial acquaintance 
with the stock commonplaces of argumentation. There was 
no careful curriculum of severe study in language, history, 
dialectic, and literature, as was required by Quintilian, and 
contemplated, in part at least, by many leading sophist-phil- 
osophers, who, long before imperial times, had followed 
Isocrates. Now, nothing is more certain than this in educa- 
tion, that the moment the vesture of thought becomes an 
object of worship — whether in the shape of word-cunning, 
elegance of style, or rules for rhetorical construction and 
rhythmical effect — the result must be decline and decay. 
With such an educational end in view, it was not surprising 
that young men in the second century a.d. should become im- 
patient of the slow processes of disciplinary preparation. 
They rushed the preparatory grammar, literature, and dialectic 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 393 

in order to get at the sophistics, the declamation and super- 
ficial politics of the rhetorical or ' university ' schools. 

The remarkable devotion to Roman literature and rhetoric 
in the provinces doubtless helped the decline, while it was a 
gratifying illustration of the rapid diffusion of the Roman 
language and literature among the native Gauls and Span- 
iards.i They helped the decline because the native provin- 
cials were essentially imitators, though, doubtless, frequently 
able, and almost always (at least in Gaul) eloquent. 

But we are not entitled, even at the bidding of Tacitus, to 
speak of the decline of education as already accomplished in 
the first two, or even three, centuries of the empire. On the 
contrary, there had been great progress. All the countries 
of the Mediterranean, including Gaul, as far north as Treves, 
and Spain as far south as Corduba, were swarming with 
accomplished men. Some of these were Italians settled in 
the provinces, but . a large number were native Gauls and 
Spaniards who lived for the acquisition of Roman literature 
and eloquence, and were as keen in the pursuit of it as the 
fervent young men of the post-medieval renaissance. The 
decline, such as it was, at the time Tacitus wrote, was in the 
educational aim ; it was this that contained the seed of 
decay. True, the old Roman idea was now no longer a living 
force; but we had in its place the Romano-Hellenic culture 
— broad, cosmopolitan, and essentially humane. I may here 
summarise briefly the grounds for refusing to accept the 
opinion that education as a national movement was retro- 
grading in imperial times. 

First ; there was the growth of public libraries. From 
150 years B.C. onwards, it became usual for the wealthy 
Roman to collect books, almost wholly Greek. This was 
following the example of distinguished Greeks 200 years 
earlier, ^milius Paullus, moreover, and Sulla conveyed 
libraries from Greece and Asia Minor as plunder of war. 
The first Public Library in Rome was instituted by Asinius 
Pollio in the time of Augustus, in the atrium of the Temple 
^ Especially after Tiberius shut up the Druidical colleges. 



394 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

of Liberty on Mt. Aventine. Julius Csesar had, before this, 
contemplated a great Greek and Latin Library, but his death 
cut short his scheme. Augustus himself instituted a library 
in the temple of Apollo on Mt. Palatine, and a second, the 
Octavian, in the Porticus Octavia. There were other public 
libraries in Kome, but the greatest was the Ulpian founded by 
Trajan. All this activity was the fruit of Hellenic example. 
There had been public libraries in several Greek towns, and 
in Alexandria, the greatest of them all was founded by 
Ptolemy Soter in 323 B.C. ; before the time of Juhus Csesar, 
when the greatest part of it was burnt down, it possessed 
certainly not less than 500,000 volumes. It was soon re- 
stored, but only to be totally destroyed during the confusion 
of the Arab occupation in 640 a.d. At Pergamon also a 
great library rivalling that of Alexandria had been founded 
by Eumenes the king. 

In later imperial times there were twenty-eight public 
libraries in Rome. Books (yolumina or rolls) were cheap, 
and booksellers' shops numerous. We are assured that in 
provincial towns this activity was imitated, and that with the 
large extension of schools under the emperors, and the 
greater accessibility of books, the facilities for education had 
been enormously increased. 

Secondly ; not only in Rome, but throughout Italy and in 
all the cities of the Empire, grammatical schools had arisen. 
These were fostered by the municipalities, encouraged by the 
emperors, and a considerable number of them were endowed 
with public money. The wide diffusion of grammar (or 
secondary) schools in all the countries round the Mediterra- 
nean may be inferred from the large number of higher or 
rhetoric schools which grew up in addition to the great 
schools of Rhodes, Athens, and Pergamos. We learn from 
Suetonius and other sources that Vespasian, 70-79 a.d., gave 
salaries from the public treasury to both Latin and Greek 
rhetoricians at Rome. Quintilian was one of these. This 
rhetorical school was further developed by Hadrian (117- 
138 A.D.). The number of professors was largely increased, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 395 

a noble building was erected, with lecture-halls where orators 
and poets held forth, and where Greek and Latin gram- 
marians and rhetoricians had numeroui students. This 
institution, called the Atheuceum, was the university of 
Eome for centuries. Antoninus Pius, continued this good 
work in the provinces, giving both honour and income to 
the higher teachers. He was the first (it is beUeved) to 
make them a privileged class by relieving them of rates and 
taxes, the obligation to hold municipal offices, to serve in the 
army, and to have soldiers quartered on them. These immu- 
nities were extended to philosophers, rhetoricians, gram- 
marians, and physicians. To prevent abuse of these privi- 
leges he restricted the number of each class who were to 
enjoy them : the smaller towns being allowed five physicians, 
three sophists,^ and three grammarians ; in large towns {i.e. 
towns in which a court of justice was established) seven 
physicians, four sophists, and four grammarians were recog- 
nised ; and in the capital towns of a province, ten physicians, 
five sophists, and five grammarians. Under Constantine the 
Great (306-337) these privileges were confirmed and ex- 
tended, and under Theodosius II. (408) the more distin- 
guished teachers at Constantinople were raised to the rank 
of counts of the first class. Great schools arose at Mar- 
seilles, Trier, Autun, Bourdeaux, and elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, at Athens, which still continued to be the 
home of philosophy, the four philosophical schools had kept 
up a kind of apostolic succession. Marcus Aurelius had, in 
176 A.D., fixed a liberal state salary to be paid to two teachers 
in each of these schools, besides two teachers of oratory. 
The council of the city appointed to these offices, subject to 
the approval of the emperor. 

Alexander Severus (218) appointed teachers of archi- 
tecture, mathematics, and mechanics, as well as medicine, 
rhetoric, and grammar, and even began a system of ' bursa- 
ries ' at Eome. And in 376, Gratian ordered that in all the 
capitals of the seventeen Gallic provinces the grammarians 

^ This term had become applicable to both rhetoricians and philosophers. 



396 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

and rhetoricians in both Latin and Greek should receive from 
the imperial chest a sum equal to their municipal salary. 

The higher school or university of Constantinople, which 
emulated Eome, had its professors increased by Theodosius 
II. to three Latin rhetoricians, five Greek sophists, ten Latin 
and ten Greek grammarians, one philosopher, and two jurists. 
They were accommodated in the Capitolium. 

The great school of Berytus was an university of law. 

Nor must we omit to mention Alexandria. The Museum of 
Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus about 280 B.C., 
was in full activity. Strabo says (xvii. p. 112, Oxford ed.) : 
' Part of the royal palaces is the Museum, which has cloisters, 
an exedra (these were semi-circular alcoves at the end of por- 
ticoes and fitted with seats where the learned taught their 
students), and a very large house in which there is a " common- 
room " for those who are fellows of the Museum and devote 
themselves to letters : there are public endowments for the Col- 
lege (Synod) and it is presided over by a priest formerly ap- 
pointed by the kings, now by Cresar.' The great libraries were 
accessible to these men and their students. There ^vas an ob- 
servatory and, it is said also, botanical and zoological gardens. 
The chief work of this college of learned men was in the 
departments of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and 
medicine. It is said they chose their own principals : if so 
they must have corresponded to our Deans of Faculties, as 
the president was a state nominee. The Emperor Claudius 
(died 54 a.d.) added a second Museum, in which his own 
historical works were to be regularly read. Caracalla (died 
217 A.D.) confiscated the salaries, and the institution came to 
an end — that is to say, in so far as it was an endowed sys- 
tem of fellowships — in the third century. 

During all these centuries, moreover, numerous gramma- 
rians and sophists wandered from town to town and opened 
private schools. 

Nor do the above facts stand alone in the educational 
history of the time. They indicate the public policy of the 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 397 

Empire, but they do not reveal that that pohcy was sup- 
ported by a wide-spread ' humanity ' destined soon to super- 
sede the humanitas of mere culture. We find this well 
exemplified in a letter (iv. 13), from Pliny the younger (died 
about 110 A.D.) addressed to Tacitus : 

I am glad [he says] to hear of your safe arrival at Rome. I am 
always anxious to see you, and especially just now. I shall stay a 
few more days at Tusculum, that I may finish a little work that I 
have in hand, for I am afraid that if I break it off when I have all 
but completed it, I shall find it difficult to take it up again. Mean- 
while, that I may lose no time, I send off this letter, so to speak, in 
advance of me, to ask a favour of you which I shall soon ask in 
person. First, let me tell you the occasion of it. Being lately at 
my native town [Comum, about twenty-eight miles north of Milan] 
a young lad, son of one of my neighbours, came to pay me a com- 
plimentary call. ' Do you go to school 1 ' I asked him. ' Yes,' he 
replied. ' Where V 'At Milan ' [Mediolanum]. ' Why not here ? ' 
'Because,' said his father, who had come with him, 'we have no 
teachers here.' ' No teachers ! Why surely,' I replied, ' it would 
be very much to the interest of all you fathers ' (and fortunately 
several fathers heard what I said) ' to have your sons educated here 
rather than anywhere else. Where can they live more pleasantly 
than in their own town ? or be bred up more virtuously than under 
their parents' eyes, or at less expense than at home 1 What an 
easy matter it would be, by a general contribution, to hire teachers, 
and to apply to their salaries the money which you now spend on 
lodging, journeys, and all you have to purchase for your sons at a 
distance from home. I have no children myself ; I look on my 
native town in the light of a child or a parent, and I am ready to 
advance a third part of any sum which you think fit to raise for the 
purpose. I would even promise the whole amount were I not 
afraid that my benefaction might be spoilt by jobbery, as I see 
happens in many towns where teachers are engaged at the public 
expense. There is only one way of meeting this evil. If the 
choice of teachers is left solely to the parents, the obligation to 
choose rightly will be enforced by the necessity of having to pay 
towards the teachers' salaries. Those who would, perhaps, be 
careless in administering another's bounty, will certainly be careful 



398 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

about their own expenses, and will see that none but those who 
deserve it receive any of my money, when they must at the same 
time receive theirs as well. So take counsel together and be en- 
couraged by my example, and be assured that the greater my pro- 
portion of the expense shall be, the better shall I be pleased. 
You can do nothing more for the good of your children, or more 
acceptable to your native town. Your sons will thus receive their 
education in the place of their birth, and be accustomed from their 
infancy to love and cling to their native soil. I trust that you 
may secure such eminent teachers that the neiglibouring towns 
will be glad to draw their learning from hence ; so that, as you 
now send your children elsewhere to be educated, other people's 
children may hereafter flock hither for instruction.' 

I thought it advisable to explain the whole affair to you circum- 
stantially, so that you may see more clearly how much obliged I 
should be if you will undertake what I request. I entreat you, in 
consideration of the importance of the matter, to look out among 
the multitude of men of letters whom the reputation of your genius 
draws around you some teachers to whom we may apply, but with- 
out as yet tying ourselves down to any particular man. I leave 
everything to the parents, I wish them to judge and select as they 
think fit ; I take on myself nothing but the trouble and expense. 
If anyone shall be found who has confidence in his own ability, let 
him go there ; but he must understand that he goes with no assur- 
ance but that derived from his own merit. (' Ancient Classics for 
English Readers — Pliny.') 

From this letter we see that two kinds of schools were in 
existence in Pliny's day: (1) schools, supported by the 
municipalities, not uncommon {multis in locis'), and (2) 
subscription-schools, where sufficient funds could be raised 
to engage a teacher. When there was a good school in any 
place, boys came from a distance and seem to have taken 
lodgings in the place in order to attend it. We also see the 
importance which Pliny attaches to education, the high 
value he sets on home training and his opinion as to free 
education. He sees the danger of bad appointments likely 
to arise from fixed payments and centralisation, and he also 
sees the necessity of some subsidy to encourage local effort. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 399 

Pliny's letter is itself evidence of the spirit of humanity to 
which I have already adverted, and which, under the influence 
of the Stoic philosophy, had already lead to charitable founda- 
tions. Large benefactions were made not only by the state 
but by private individuals, for the maintenance of orphan- 
ages ; and successive emperors added to these in many 
Italian towns. 

Nor, as further evidence of educational activity, were 
writers on education wanting. There were many whose 
names and books are lost, but some of the most eminent are 
still household words in the history of education. Omitting 
the earlier writers, we have Seneca, Quintilian, Tacitus, Pliny 
the younger, Plutarch, and Musonius the Stoic, who all wrote 
on the subject of education, and the opinions of any one of 
whom, in so far as they can be now ascertained, might, in 
their educational reference, be the subject of an interesting 
and instructive monograph. 

As regards individual life ; it is unhappily true that most 
of the educated intelligence of the empire sought, under very 
lax moral conditions, the satisfactions of material wealth or 
the glory of place and power. The vetus disciplina, the prisca 
virtus, was gone from the life even of the senate, now an 
upstart body of novihommes. The religion of Rome was 
dead, for, as Professor Flint truly says, ' Eome had made the 
world Roman and become herself cosmopolitan.' ^ And yet 
we can still find a succession of men of the old Roman type 
among whom the traditionary dignity of family intercourse 
and severity of morals survived. The Stoic philosophy, as a 
noble scheme of life, had established itself in many minds as 
a motive force, and filled the place no longer occupied by the 
memories of a great history and an ancestral religion. When 
we note the humanity and even tenderness conveyed in the 
letter from Pliny quoted above, and realise also the universal 
human relations of the Stoic system, we can see that for the 
cultured men of the empire a noble and beneficent existence 
was always possible. 

1 History of Philosophy of Histonj, p. 56. 



400 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

In view of all these facts, I repeat that it seems to me absurd 
to talk of the decline of education in the first two centuries 
of the Christian era. It never had been so widely extended, 
and never before had it received so much fostering care. 
Nor have I found any evidence that the grammar schools 
were, in their working, seriously defective. The quality of 
the discipline and instruction of the higher schools, it is true, 
had degenerated in some quarters because of the large acces- 
sion to the number of learners and of competing teachers. 
But an excellent education could still be obtained at all the 
great centres of the empire. 

The ethical element in education was, moreover, making 
progress, while the intellectual elements of culture were being 
extended. The Alexandrian philosophy of the time had a 
religious and mystical tendency, and elsewhere the supremacy 
of ethics in philosophy and the prevalence of purer and more 
exalted notions of God have to be noted. These were educa- 
tive forces of the highest kind. Cicero says much on this 
subject that might be here quoted. Quintilian, again, 
advocating the study of ethics by the orator, says : ' If the 
world is governed by a Providence, the state ought surely to 
be ruled by the superintendence of good men. If our souls 
are of divine origin, we ought to devote ourselves to virtue, 
and not be slaves to a body of terrestrial nature ' (xii. 2). 
ApoUonius of Tyana was an itinerant preacher of ethics — a 
kind of apostle. ' The whole universe which you see 
around you,' says Seneca, ' comprising all things divine and 
human, is one. We are members of one great body. Nature 
has made iis relative, when it begat us from the same 
materials and for the same destinies.' ^ 

Depraved superstitions, moral excesses, and brutal pleas- 
ures, meanwhile characterised a large proportion of the 
people, who had not yet found a substitute for their lost gods, 
while training to civic virtue had become impossible for them 
under the inevitable imperial despotism. 

But I need not dwell on what is a commonplace of moral 
1 Seneca, Ep. xcv., quoted by Mr. Lecky. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 401 

history ; it will be more to the purpose to give a summary 
of two writers who exhibit the ethical and humane spirit 
which was then beginning to permeate society, viz. Plutarch 
and Musonius. 

Plutakch 1 

Plutarch, a Greek, wrote his essay on the education of chil- 
dren about 100 A.D. The following is a summary of his 
wisdom. 

The most pregnant and epigrammatic of his utterances is this, 
* Nature without education is blind.' In beginning his essay, he 
says, ' Come, let us consider what is to be said regarding the edu- 
cation of free children, and by what means they may be made 
virtuous.' But he confines himself within much narrower limits 
than a purpose so large would have led us to expect. He more 
than once, as might be expected in a Greek, dwells on the impor- 
tance of gymnastics for the young and of recreation for adults 
who are disposed to work hard. Even a bow we have to unbend 
if it is to do its work properly. 

For good agriculture, he says, there must be good soil, a skilful 
husbandman, and fruitful seed ; so in education, nature is the soil, 
the master the husbandman, and precepts and instruction the seed. 
Deficiency in the nature of the child may be supplied by labour 
and culture. There is a concurrence of three things requisite to 
virtue — nature, reason, and use. By reason he means instruction, 
by use he means exercise. 

Like all other writers on education Plutarch dwells much on the 
importance of exercise with a view to habit. Without instruction 
nature is blind, but even where there is instruction, of what value 
will it be without constant practice in the good 1 He presses the 
cultivation of the memory in the sphere of intellectual instruction, 
but beyond this he has little to say on the training of the intellect. 

It is on the moral education of the boy and youth that he most 
strongly insists. Let them be taught, above all, to keep their tem- 
pers and to control their tongues. A man never regrets having 
said too little. That they should be trained to speak the truth is 

1 Doubtful whether the essay on education was Plutarch's. 
26 



402 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

essential. Lying is for slaves. He points out that the elements of 
virtue are love of honour and fear of punishment (rc/^w/jta), and 
that the faults of boys are, in truth, trifling in themselves, and 
easily corrected ; but in youths these faults may grow to vices. 
' Childhood is a tender thing, and may easily be wrought into any 
shape.' 

The main instrument of all education is philosophy. By phil- 
osophy he means all that bears on the conduct of life. The sole 
guide of the mind of man is philosophy. By this we are taught 
what is good and bad, honourable and dishonourable, just and 
unjust, what we are most to desire and what most to shun, and the 
duties we owe to the gods, to our parents, friends, strangers, soci- 
ety ; also the regulation of all the passions, &c. In this he repeats 
Isocrates. 

With a view to sound instruction, the writers of antiquity are to 
be read, confining boys to the good and useful in these. 

Parents are enjoined to care for their children's education, and 
to be careful in their choice of nurses, pcedagogi, and masters, not 
grudging expenditure on so important a matter as education. They 
are also urged themselves to take an interest in what their children 
are learning. 

On the subject of coercion he says, ' Children are to be won to 
follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on 
no account to be forced thereto by whipping or any other contume- 
lious punishments. I will not urge that such usage seems to me 
more agreeable to slaves than to ingenuous (freeborn) citizens! 
And even slaves when thus handled are dulled and discouraged 
from the performance of their tasks, partly by reason of the smart 
of their stripes, partly because of the disgrace thereby inflicted. 
But praise and reproof are more effectual on free-born children 
than any such disgraceful handling, the former to incite them to 
what is good, the latter to restrain them from that which is evil. . . . 
It is useful not to give them such large commendations as to puff 
them up with pride.' 

As to amount of work to be demanded of the young, Plutarch 
says that some parents, being over hasty to advance their children 
in learning beyond their equals, overwork them, and so cause them 
to be ill-affected to study. For, ' as plants by moderate watering 
are nourished, but with overmuch moisture are glutted, so is the 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 403 

spirit improved by moderate labours, but overwlielmed by such as 
are excessive.' 

Memory should be cultivated. It is the mother of the Muses. 
'Nothing doth so mucli beget and nourish learning as memory.' 

Filthy talk is to be checked, because, as Democritus says, words 
are the shadows of actions. Children must be brought up to be 
affable and courteous. 

Nothino- can be more ' modern ' than all this. 
Musonius the Stoic, again, is especially interesting, as he 
discusses the question of the education of women.^ 

' In turning over the pages of the Greek Anthology of StobaBus,'** 
says the late Dr. Muir, ' I found (in the Appendix containing ex- 
tracts from the collection of John of Damascus, in vol. iv. pp. 212 
ff. and 220 ff.) two passages quoted from Musonius, the one headed 
" On the question whether men's daughters should be educated 
similar to their sons," and the other affirming tliat " Women ought 
to study philosophy." The author, C. Musonius Eufus, was "a 
celebrated Stoic philosopher," who lived " in the first century of the 
Christian era " ' (Smith's ' Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biog- 
raphy and Mythology,' s. v.). 

The following is a translation of the first of the two passages : — 
* The conversation having turned on the question whether people's 
sons and daughters should receive the same education, the philoso- 
pher (after referring to the analogy furnished by the identical 
training received by both the males and the females of two of the 
species of animals employed by men to render them active service, 
horses and dogs) asks whether men ought to receive any special 
education and training superior to those allowed to women, as if 
both alike should not acquire the same virtues, or if it is possible for 
tlie two sexes to attain to the same virtues otherwise than by the 
same education. But it is easy to learn that a man has not differ- 
ent virtues from a woman. For, first, the one should have good 

1 The late Dr. J. Muir, founder of the Sanskrit Chair in the university of 
Edinburgh, and a well-known scholar, printed, or translated, a portion of 
Musonius about twenty years ago and sent me a copj', from which I now give 
extracts. 

2 Joannis Stobcei Florilegium, edited by Meineke (Teubner's 12mo edition, 
1857). 



404 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

sense as well as the other ; for of what use would either a foolish 
man or a foolish woman be '? Then the man could not be a good 
citizen if he were unjust. And the woman could not carry on the 
concerns of the household virtuously if not being just, but the 
contrary, she should first wrong her husband, as they say Eriphyle 
did.^ It is also good that the woman as well as the man should be 
self-controlled^ (o-w^povciv) . . . . Perhaps some one would say 
that courage [literally, manliness, dvSpeta] is a quality befitting men 
alone ; but even this is not so, for the best woman also should be 
courageous, and be free from weakness, so that she may not be 
overcome either by toil or by fear. Otherwise how can she continue 
virtuous, if anyone either by terror or by imposing toil can force 
her to submit to anything disgraceful"? Women ought also to 
repel assaults, for if not they will show themselves weaker than 
hens, and the females of other birds, which fight for their young 
against animals much bigger than themselves. How, then, should 
woman not stand in need of courage 1 And that they share a cer- 
tain martial vigour was proved by the race of the Amazons, who 
subdued many nations by force of arms. So that if other women 
are deficient in courage, this must be laid to the account of ^ want 
of training rather than to [weakness of] nature. If, then, the same 
virtues must pertain to meii and women, it follows necessarily that 
the same training and education must be suitable for both. For 
in the case of all animals and plants, the application of the proper 
treatment ought to impart to each the excellence belonging to it. 
Or, if both men and women should have to possess equal skill in 
playing the flute, or in performing on the harp, and if this were nec- 
essary for tlieir livelihood, we should impart to both equally the re- 
quisite instruction. But if both ought to excel in the virtue proper 
to mankind, and to be in an equal measure wise and temperate, and 

1 Eriphyle was the wife of Amphiaraus who was bribed by Polynices with 
the necklace of Harmonia to betray her husband's lurking place, so that he 
was forced to join the expedition against Thebes, where he fell. 

2 See Dr. Jowett's introduction to his translation of Plato's Cliarmidas, 
p. 3, where he calls ' temperance, or auxppoffijt'rj, a peculiarly Greek notion, 
which may also be rendered moderation, modesty, discretion, wisdom, with- 
out completely exhausting by all these terms the various associations of the 
word. ' 

3 There being a gap in the text here, I have followed the editor Meiueke's 
conjecture as the mode of filling it. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 405 

to partake in courage and righteousness the one no less than the 
other, shall we not educate them both in the same manner, and 
teach both equally the art by which a human being may become 
good? Yes, we must act thus and no otherwise. What then? 
Some one will perhaps say, Would you think it right to teach men 
to spin wool just as you do women ? and women equally with men 
to addict themselves to gymnastic exercises % No, this I will never 
approve. But I say that as in the human race men have a stronger 
and women a weaker nature, each of these natures should have 
the tasks which are most suited to it, assigned to it, and that the 
heavier should be allotted to the stronger, and the lighter to the 
weaker. Spinning, as well as housekeeping, would therefore be 
more suitable for women than for men, while gymnastics, as well as 
out of door work, would be fitter for men than for women : though 
sometimes some men might properly undertake some of the lighter 
tasks and such as seem to belong to women ; and women again 
might engage in the harder tasks, and those which appear more 
appropriate for men, in cases where either bodily qualities, or 
necessity, or particular occasions, might lead to such action. For 
perhaps all human tasks are open to all, and common both to men 
and women, and nothing is necessarily appointed exclusively for 
either ; not that ^ some things may not be more suitable for the 
one, and others for the other nature ; so that some are called men's 
and others women's occupations. But whatever things have refer- 
ence to virtue, these one may rightly affirm to be equally appro- 
priate for both natures, since we say that virtues do not belong 
more to the one than to the other. Wherefore I think it is reason- 
able that both males and females should be similarly instructed in 
matters relating to virtue ; and they should be taught from their 
infancy that such and such a thing is good, and such and such a 
thing is bad (the same thing bad for both) and that one thing is 
profitable and another injurious, and that this is to be done and 
that not ; from which wisdom is acquired by those who learn, by 
boys and girls equally, and in no way differently by each ; then 
they are to be inspired with a feeling of shame in regard to every- 
thing base. These qualities being implanted in them, it neces- 
sarily follows that both men and women will become virtuous. 
And those who are rightly instructed, whether males or females, 

* The words of the original (ixi] 5)] 5k) must apparently bear this sense. 



406 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

are to be accustomed to endure toil, not to fear death, not to be 
crushed by any calamity, so that they may become courageous [or 
manly] ; for it has been shown above that women too should par- 
take in the character of courage [or manliness, dvSpia]. Then again, 
it is an excellent thing to teach them to avoid selfishness ^ and to 
honour equality, and, as human beings, to seek to benefit and not 
to injure mankind; and such instruction renders those who receive 
it just. But why should a man learn these things more than a 
woman 1 For if it is fitting that women should be just, then both 
sexes should be taught these things which are most seasonable and 
most important. For if the man should know some little matter 
connected with some artist's department, and the woman not, or 
conversely, this will not prove the education of each to be different. 
Only, as regards any of the most important matters let not the one 
be taught differently from the other. If anyone asks me what 
science is to preside over this instruction I shall reply that as with- 
out philosophy no man can be rightly instructed, so neither can any 
woman. But I do not mean to say that if women are to philoso- 
phise they ought properly to possess fluency and extraordinary 
cleverness in discussion ; for I do not praise this very much even 
in men ; but I mean that women should acquire a virtuous char- 
acter and nobleness, since philosophy is the pursuit of a noble 
character, and nothing else.' 

The following is a translation of the second passage mentioned 
above : — 'And when one asked him if women too should study 
philosophy, he began, somewhat in this way, to teach that they 
should. Women, he said, have received from the gods the same 
reason as men, the reason which we use in dealing with each other, 
and by which we discern, in regard to each act, whether it is good 
or bad, noble or base. So, too, the female has the same percep- 
tions as the male — seeing, hearing, smelling, and so forth. . . . 
So, too, not only men, but women also, have by nature the desire 
and the adaptation for virtue ; for the latter, no less than the 
former, are so formed as to be pleased with noble and righteous 
actions and to disapprove the contraries of these. This being the 
case, why should it belong to men principally to inquire and con- 
sider how they shall live nobly — which is the province of philos- 
ophy — and not principally to women ? Is it because it is fitting 

1 irKeovi^la. 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 407 

for men to be good, and not for women '? But let us inquire in 
regard to every particular quality suitable for a woman who shall 
be good ; for it will appear that she will derive each of these char- 
acteristics principally from philosophy. First, a woman ought to 
be a good housekeeper, and capable of judging what things are ex- 
pedient for the house, and qualified to rule the domestics. Now, 
I say that such qualities would belong most to a woman who 
studied philosophy, since each of these things is a part of life, and 
the science of matters regarding life is nothing else than philosophy, 
and the philosopher, as Socrates said, continues inquiring " what 
things, good or bad, are done in the house." But the woman 
should further be self-controlled, so as to keep herself pure . . . 
not to be the slave of desires, nor quarrelsome, nor extravagant, nor 
fond of dress. These are the works of a virtuous woman ; and, in 
addition, she should control anger, not give way to grief, be supe- 
rior to all passion. These things philosophy enjoins, and it appears 
to me that anyone, whether man or woman, who should learn and 
practise them, would be a most correct person. What then] 
These things are so. Is not, therefore, a woman justified in study- 
ing philosophy, in being a blameless partner of [her husband's] 
life, a good helpmeet in housekeeping, a careful guardian of her 
husband and children, and in every way free from the love of gain 
and from selfishness ■? And what woman would possess this char- 
acter more than the student of philosophy, who would be bound, 
if philosophy is uniform [] in its effects] to esteem the doing 
worse than the suffering of injustice — insomuch as it is more dis- 
graceful — and to regard being worsted as better than gaining an 
advantage, and to love her children more than [her own] life? 
And what woman would be juster than she who possessed such a 
character 1 And it befits the educated woman to be more coura- 
geous than the uneducated, and the student of philosophy than she 
who is untrained in it, so that she would neither submit to any- 
thing disgraceful from the fear of death, or through shrinking from 
toil, nor succumb to anyone because he was well-born, or powerful, 
or rich, or even a tyrant. For it is her fortune to have studied to 
be high-rainde<l,^ and to regard death as not an evil and life as not 
a good, and similarly not to turn away from toil, or at all to in- 
dulge in indolence. Whence it is to be expected that such a 

^ fjiiya (ppovetv. 



408 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

woman would work with her own hands, and submit to toil, should 
be able herself to suckle the infants to whom slie gave birth, and 
minister to her husband with her own hands, and fulfil without 
reluctance tasks which some consider as work only fit for slaves. 
Would not, now, such a woman be a great treasure for her hus- 
band, an ornament to her relatives, and a good example to those of 
her own sex who knew her 1 

* But some will say that the women who visit philosophers must 
generally become bold and presuming when, leaving their house- 
hold occupations, they live surrounded by men, and practise dis- 
cussions, and argue subtly, and analyse syllogisms, while they ought 
to be sitting at home spinning. But I am so far from approving 
of women who are studying philosophy leaving their proper avoca- 
tions and devoting themselves solely to discussions, that I should 
not even think it fit for men to do this. But I say that they ought 
to engage in all the reasonings with which they occupy themselves 
for the sake of their avocations. For as medical speculations are 
useless unless they conduce to the health of the human body, so if 
a philosopher holds or inculcates any doctrine, it is of no value 
unless it promote the virtue of the human soul. But, above all 
things, we ought to weigh the principles which we think that 
women studying philosophy should follow, so as to form a judg- 
ment whether the doctrine which teaches that modesty is the 
greatest good can make women bold, or whether that which incul- 
cates the greatest composure can accustom them to live recklessly 
[or impudently], or that which shows vice to be the greatest evil 
does not teach virtuous self-restraint, or that which represents 
housekeeping as a virtue, and exhorts a woman to be satisfied with 
it and to work with her own hands, does not dispose a woman to 
practise household occupations.' 

I have said enough, I think, to justify me in declining 
to accept the statements regarding the degeneracy of edu- 
cation in the first or even the second century. The actual 
facts compel us largely to discount the opinion of stern 
morahsts like Tacitus, or professed satirists like Juvenal 
or Petronius Arbiter. There is no period of human his- 
tory which does not afford weaknesses to expose and vices 
to lash. At the same time, it was the fact that nations 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES 409 

which, like the Greeks and Romans, had lost their tradi- 
tionary faith, and which regarded rhetoric or oratory — 
which at best was only intellectual and aesthetic culture 
— as the highest aim of public education, were doomed to 
find their mistake. It was easy for ambitious young men — 
especially now that oratorical forms and the technique of 
rhetoric were settled, and innumerable models were avail- 
able — to scamp grammatical and literary preparation, and 
to mistake glibness of tongue and facility of imitation for 
true oratorical power. It was this tendency which Quin- 
tilian and Tacitus saw and wished to arrest. It received an 
impulse from professed rhetoricians and sophists swarming 
from Greece and Asia Minor in search of the means of 
support. They coidd not but compete with each other, 
and offer the maximum of accomplishment for the mini- 
mum of labour on the part of the student. Lucian, towards 
the close of the second century, exposes the evils which by 
that time had become conspicuous. The third century, I 
consider, was the century of decadence, and also of the rise 
of the Christian schools. Let me here note that it is partly 
to counteract the tendency to haste and superficiality on 
the part of ambitious and active young men that modern 
societies have instituted and endowed universities and 
schools. Without these, and the conditions of sound at- 
tainment which they are authorised to impose as conditions 
of graduation and of professional qualifications, we, in these 
days, should be flooded with the same evils as overwhelmed 
the education of the ancient world. This mode of regulat- 
ing education had not altogether escaped the attention of 
the imperial administration, as I have shown, but the 
measures which were taken were inadequate to counteract 
the operation of other causes in a dissolving society. 

Meanwhile a new formative force had entered the world 
in humble guise, and was steadily making way. It gathered 
into a unity and round a sacred personality the Stoic human- 
ity and universalism, the Platonic ethical ideahsm, and all 



410 PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 

the purest conceptions of the Divine which the various 
races of mankind had painfully, and each only partially, 
elaborated. God immanent in His own world as a God 
not only of law but of love — Himself seeking man to raise 
him to sonship^was an overmastering thought. In the 
presence of this sublime conception, all so-called culture 
seemed an impertinence, and all philosophy merely sub- 
ordinate and contributory. In the light of the great idea, 
citizenship, culture, oratory, all alike, as aims of education 
disappear. Citizenship of the city of God now -transcends 
while it comprehends the claims of all earthly cities ; culture 
is the mere adornment of the life in Christ, oratory the mere 
vehicle for proclaiming the Evangel. An organised scheme 
of guidance for the individual spirit during its transitory 
passage to an eternal life arose out of the central thought 
of Christianity ; and this superseded all previous concep- 
tions of the education of man. Errors, unfortunately, were 
made. Philosophy and the products of human genius were, 
ere long, held to be essentially hostile to the new life- 
Many centuries had to elapse before Eomano-Hellenic cul- 
ture was found to be compatible with the Christian aim. 

To some it may appear that in the past pages, while I 
have allowed their full educational value to civil laws, and 
the social organisation of nations, I have yet attached too 
great an importance to national religious conceptions. I 
think not. Outside the prosaic and prudential moralities, 
without which the most elementary society cannot sustain 
itself for a day, the idea of God and of man as related to 
Him governs all life, and therefore all education, of the 
human spirit. It determines all ethics, and consequently 
all civic and political activity, though it may be silently. 
For the idea of God is not merely the conception of a world- 
cause and world-order, but gathers up into itself all the ideal 
impulses, infinite in their essential character, which place the 
mind of man on its highest plane of energy — whether in 
philosophy and art, or in practical politics and the conduct 
of life. It is the final interpretation of man. That idea, 



THE ARYAN OR INDO-EUROPEAN RACES All 

such as it may be from time to time and age to age, lies in 
the innermost core of consciousness even when its exis- 
tence is denied. Epicurus has his God as well as Zeno, 
Plato no less than Paul, the Aztec as well as the Chinese, 
and above that idea, which also is the ideal, no man and 
no nation can rise. The educational administrator has to 
think of these things if he is not, with the best intentions, 
to leave his country worse than he found it, and sow the 
seeds of dissolution. ' To govern well,' says Milton, ' is to 
train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which 
springs from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that) ; and 
that which is our beginning, regeneration and happiest end, 
likeness to God which we call godliness : and this is the true 
flourishing of a land. Other things follow, as the shadow 
does the substance.' ^ 

Authorities. — Largely loci classici, especially Suetonius, De Graviin. 
Cicero, Dc Graf,. ; Tacitus, De Drat. ; Pliny ; Stiabo ; Becker's Gallus ; Erzie- 
hung und Jugendtinterricht bci den Griechen u. Edmcrn, von J. L. Ussing; 
Ihne's History of Rome ; Monimsen's History of Rome, also of the Roman 
Provinces ; Hegel's Philosophy of History ; Krause's Geschichte dcr Erz. etc. 
beiden Griechen und Romern; Bahr's Geschichte der Romisehen Litteratur ; 
Emile JuUien, Sur Ics Profcsscurs de la litterature dans I'ancienne Rome; 
Lecky's History of European Morals. Also several books mentioned under 
Greece and references to numerous historians. 

1 Of Reformation in England, second book (near beginning). 



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lighting up the path of the student 
through the mazes of documentary 
material." 

American Journal of Sociology, 
University of Chicago, Chicago, III. : 
— " Colonel Wright could not fail to 
produce a notable book on the sub- 
ject to which he has devoted this 
volume. There is no equally avail- 
able compilation and classification." 



Outlook, New York :— " The in- 
itial volume .... sets a high 
standard for its successors to pre- 
serve. . . . These bibliographies 
fit the book peculiarly for advanced 
classes, from which independent 
work is expected. The field which 
the volume covers is extremely broad. 
On all these subjects a 
prodigious amount of American sta- 
tistical information is given." 

Dial : — " In this field of thought 
Mr. Wright's book presents more 
abundant stores of fact than any 
similar publication. The statistical 
matter is actually made interesting. 
The student of society 
is here supplied with a mass of data 
of great importance, and is directed 
to abundant and valuable sources of 
information and discussion." 



4 Longmans, Green, &- Go's Publications. 

The Art of Teaching. 

By David Salmon, Principal of Swansea Training College. Crown 

8vo. 289 pages. $1.25. 
This book is devoted to the exposition of teaching as a Technical Art, 
founded on experience, philosophical principle and scientific observation. 
In the Introduction the author adopts Milton's definition of " a complete 
and generous education," but points out that the school teacher is really 
only one factor in physical, moral, and intellectual culture, and that, even 
to be efficiently so, he has need of professional training. His aim must be 
directed to secure the utility, discipline, and pleasure of the taught as 
results of exercised activity. The author takes up in successive chapters — 
(i) Order, Attention, and Discipline, and gives rules applicable to the 
regulated and successful exercise of these that they may become habitual ; 
(2) Oral Questioning — how to proceed with and succeed in it, and what to 
avoid while engaged in the process ; (3) Object Lessons — what to aim at in 
giving them, and how to accomplish the intended result ; (4) Reading, 
Spelling, Writing, and Arithmetic — how they should be taught, and the 
relative merits of various methods of procedure ; (5) English, including 
Composition, Grammar, and Literature ; (6) Geography, and how to make 
the teaching of it educative and valuable ; (7) History, and the methods of 
giving it a living (not a bookworm) interest ; (8) the Education of Infants — 
as a speciality. 

[From the New Yo7-k Nation^ 

Salmon's contributions to elementary school literature are many and valu- 
able. It suffices to mention his "Object Lessons," "School Grammar," 
"School Composition," "Stories from Early English History," He has 
now collected into the volume before us his views on the " Art of Teach- 
ing." The treatment of the subject is orderly, thorough, authoritative. He 
takes up first the fundamental matters of order, attention, discipline. Then 
comes a charming discussion of the art of oral questioning. Next follows an 
estimate of the claims upon attention of the main subjects of elementary study, 
with invaluable hints as to the teaching of each. The subjects treated are : 
Reading, Spelling, Writing, Arithmetic, English, Geography, History. This 
is, indeed, familiar ground, but the treatment is so able, so acute, so com- 
prehensive, that there is constant variety and constant interest. A very 
valuable portion of the volume is the section of sixty pages on Infant Edu- 
cation. Not only are the history and development of the kindergarten here 
admirably discussed, but the original and valuable contributions of England 
to the Education of young children are set forth. Most wise and helpful is 
.Salmon's discussion of the best ways of teaching the elementary studies. 
This portion of the book is a true teachers' manual. It is a genuine pleasure 
to commend without qualification this admirable manual. It is a worthy 
companion to Fitch's "Lectures on Teaching," and, like that book, ought 
to be on every teacher's shelf. 



H. C. Missiraer, Superintendent 
of Public Schools, Erie, Pa.:— "I 
have read Salmon's ' Art of Teach- 
ing,' and believe it to be the best work 
on the subject yet published. It is 



simple, direct, clear, practical, and 
has evidently been written by one 
who has had experience with every 
problem and difficulty of the school- 



Longmans, Green, &- Go's Publications. 5 

A New Manual of Method. 

By A. H. Garlick, B.A., Head Master of the Woolwich P. T. Centre. 
Crown 8vo. New Edition. 398 pages. $1.20.* 

Contents : School Economy — Discipline — Classification (Grading) — 
Notes of Lessons— Class Teaching — Object Lessons — Kindergarten — 
Arithmetic — Reading — Spelling — Writing — Geography — History — 
English — Elementary Science — Music. 

The experience of the author in the teaching of School Method has led 
him to believe that young students require much more help in this subject 
than is offered in existing manuals, and that it is essential that the informa- 
tion contained should be offered in its most serviceable form. His experi- 
ence has shown that no book is suitable unless it is comprehensive in its 
range, practical in its nature, and modern in its methods. For this reason 
all the subject-matter in this book has been carefully methodized, and much 
of it thrown into teaching form — the form which is most difficult to young 
teachers to acquire, and the most useful in practice. 

This work is based on the writer's teaching notes during the past ten 
years ; and as it grew to meet the wants of his own pupils for their recur- 
ring examinations, it is believed that it will be found specially suitable for 
teachers and students. 

William H. Maxwell, City Superintendent, New York, in the Educa- 
tional Review; — ". . . He treats of all the subjects in the elementary 
curriculum. . . . The conspicuous merits of the book are its clear- 
ness, its conciseness, and its fullness. If a teacher is at a loss to know 
how to teach an important point, — say in arithmetic, history or geography, 
— he has only to open this book at the appropriate heading, and he will find 
an excellent method of presenting it, which, if he has any ingenuity, he can 
easily adapt to his own uses. If he is in doubt about a matter of discipline, 
such, for instance, as how to treat a case of obstinacy, he will find the 
different kinds of obstinacy classified, and the appropriate treatment sug- 
gested for each kind. In short, the book is a vade mecum which the teacher 
should no more think of reading through than he would of perusing the 
dictionary from cover to cover, but which he will do well to consult when 
confronted with a difficulty. . . . " 

J. J. McNulty, Professor of Philosophy, the College of the City of New 
York: — "In our pedagogical course, we are using Garlick's Manual of 
Method as a practical guide for students intending to teach. The remark- 
able success of our candidates for state and city licenses, and the satisfac- 
tory results of the examinations in methods of teaching, I attribute, in large 
measure, to the interesting manner in which the various subjects are pre- 
sented by Mr. GarHck." 

Nation, New York : — " It is the best manual of its scope <in English." 

The Independent, New York : — " The notes given on all these topics 
are those of a master, and of a master from whom any teacher in these 
grades of instruction might be glad to receive suggestions." 

Professor Carla Wenckebach, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.: — 
" It is excellent. No teacher can do without it." 



6 Longmans, Green, &- Go's Publications. 

Teaching and School Organization. 

A Manual of Practice, with Especial Reference to Secondary Instruc- 
tion. Edited by P. A. Barnett. Crown 8vo. 438 pages. $2.00. 

The object of this Manual is to collect and co-ordinate for the use of 
students and teachers, the experience of persons of authority in special 
branches of educational practice, and to cover as nearly as possible the 
whole field of the work of Secondary Schools of both higher and lower 
grades. 

The subjects treated in the 22 chapters are as follows : The Criterion in 
Education — Organization and Curricula in Boys' Schools — Kindergarten — 
Reading — Drawing and Writing — Arithmetic and Mathamatics — English 
Grammar and Composition — English Literature — Modern History — Ancient 
History — Geography — Classics — Science — Modern Languages — Vocal Music 
— Discipline — Ineffectiveness of Teaching — Specialization — School Libraries 
— School Hygiene — Apparatus and Furniture — Organization and Curricula 
in Girls' Schools. 

A Manual of Clay-Modelling for Teachers and Scholars. 

By Mary Louisa Hermione Unwin. With 66 Illustrations and a 
Preface by T. G. Roofer, M.A. Balliol College, Oxford. i2mo. 
$1.00. 

The course set forth in this Manual is suitable for children of six or seven 
years of age and upwards. It is a great advantage to young children to 
learn to handle the clay and to become accustomed to using it. They may 
begin with the simplest objects, such as beads, round or flat, of different 
sizes ; cherries with string or wicker stalks ; a sausage, or cigar ; a small 
saucer, or a basket, a bun, or an open pea-pod with loose peas in it made 
separately ; a pat of butter, or a cottage loaf, are also suitable. For the 
work of advanced pupils, or for the higher classes in schools, more difficult 
subjects may be attempted. 

Kindergarten Guide. 

By Lois Bates With numerous Illustrations, chiefly in half-tone, and 
16 colored plates. Crown Svo. 388 pages. $1.50.* 

In addition to a full description of the kindergarten gifts and occupations, 
the book shows how ordinary subjects may be taught on kindergarten 
principles. 

Churchman, New York: — "A long needed hand-book for the kinder- 
garten teacher. . . . The whole course of instruction is elaborately 
explained with full illustrations, so that the teacher possesses, in this i2mo 
volume, a complete compendium for her work." 

Journal of Education, Boston, Mass.: — " Never before has there been 
so full, varied, and detailed a treatment of the subject from the standpoint 
of teacher, parent, and child. No family in which there are little children 
should be without this sum of all kindergarten virtues." 



Longmans, Green, Sr Cos Publications. 



Common Sense in Education. 

By P. A. Barnett, M. A. Crown 8vo. 331 pages. $1.50. 

This volume is based on a systematic course of lectures on the Practice 
of Education, which was delivered to Teachers during the last term of 1898. 
The lectures have been re-written and enlarged, and additional matter 
treated, so as to form a complete introduction to the study of current prob- 
lems of teaching and school practice. Such points of general theory are 
discussed as determine organization, curriculum, and schoolroom procedure. 

The subject of education is treated under the following general heads : — 
I. Lessons from the History of Education ; Warnings from Demonstrated 
Errors — 2. The Physical Basis of Education, and the Hygiene of Learning 
— 3. The General Discipline of Character — 4. Discipline in Instruction — 5. 
Curricula — 6. Audible Speech ; Native and Foreign Languages — 7. Liter- 
ature — 8. Science and Mathematics — 9. History and Geography — 10. The 
" Classical " Languages — 11. Special Studies and Examinations — 12. The 
Making of the Teacher. 



Paul H. Hanus, Harvard Uni- 
versity, Cambridge, Mass. : — "I 
have looked the book through with 
much interest. While I cannot agree 
with all the author's views, I am glad 



to see that the book justifies the 
title. I shall take pleasure in calling 
the attention of students and teach- 
ers to it." 



Selections from the Sources of English History : being 
a Supplement to Text=books of English History, 
B.C. 55— A.D. 1832. 

Arranged and edited by Charles W. Colby, M.A., Ph.D., Professor 
of History in McGill University, Montreal. Crown 8vo. 361 pages. 
$1.50. 



Professor Max Farrand, 

Wesleyan University, Middletown, 
Conn. : — " The most satisfactory 
expression of opinion that I can 
make to you, I suppose, of Colby's 
Selections, is the announcement that 
I am so greatly pleased with it that 
I shall adopt it for use in my class 
in English History for next year." 

Professor Benjamin S. Terry, 
University of Chicago, Chicago, 
III.: — " It is a good book, and 
something which the teacher of 
English History has long needed. 
I shall be very glad to use it in my 
own work." 

Julius Howard Pratt, Jr., 
Milwaukee Academy, Milwaukee, 
Wis.: — " It is very satisfactory to 



have books of this kind that give 
a glimpse at the original sources in 
a way to attract rather than to repel 
the young student." 

Professor Allen Johnson, Iowa 
College, Grinnell, Iowa: — "Let me 
add simply that I am greatly pleased 
with the presswork of this volume ; it 
is a pleasure to put so faultless a piece 
of work into the hands of students." 

Journal of Education, Boston : 
— "Few 'supplements' are as indis- 
pensable to the satisfactory study of 
any subject as is Dr. Colby's ' Selec- 
tions from the Sources of English 
History.' It is not too much to say 
that no teacher should conduct a class 
in English history without making 
constant use of this book." 



8 Longmans, Green, & Go's Publications. 

ANNOUNCEMENTS. 
American Teachers' Series. 

Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. have the pleasure to announce that 
they have arranged for the publication of a series of books for the 
guidance and assistance of teachers in elementary' and secondary schools, 
and of students in normal schools and teachers' colleges ; to be pub- 
lished under the general title of Amei-ican Teachers' Series. The series 
Mrill be under the general editorship of Dr. James E. Russell, Dean 
of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. 

The folloiving volumes are now in preparation ; others will be announced 
at an early date : 

I. English. 

By George R. Carpenter and Franklin T. Baker, Professors in 
Columbia University. 

II. Manual Training. 

By Charles R. Richards, Professor of Manual Training in Teachers 
College ; late Director of the Department of Science and Technology 
in Pratt Institute. 

III. Latin and Greek. 

By Charles E. Bennett, Professor of Latin in Cornell University 
and George P. Bristol, Professor of Greek in Cornell University 

IV. History and Civics. 

By Henry E. Bourne, Professor of History in the Western Reserve 
University, Cleveland, Ohio. 

V. Mathematics. 

By J. W. A. Young, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mathematical 
Pedagogy in the University of Chicago. 

VI. Chemistry and Physics. 

By Alexander Smith, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of General Chem- 
istry in the University of Chicago; and 



Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. will be happy to send their 

Catalogue, describing more than i,ooo text-books and 

works of reference, to any teacher on request. 









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